Intelligence chief 1st Egyptian official to visit new Israeli PM

Egyptian intelligence chief Abbas Kamel paid an official visit to Israel on Wednesday for meetings with the Israeli prime minister and defense minister on the ceasefire Egypt brokered in May, which an Egyptian government source told Mada Masr “needs constant follow up.”

The head of the Egyptian General Intelligence Service is the first Egyptian official to visit Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett since Israel’s new government was installed in June. 

The visit comes 48 hours after a rocket was launched from the Gaza Strip into Israeli territories. 

The government source said that the visit was intended to "raise the level of security and political coordination between the two countries, in addition to ensuring that there is no new escalation with Gaza.” 

Kamel, the head of the General Intelligence Service, was also due to meet with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah later on Wednesday, according to Palestinian media reports. 

In May, during eight days in which hundreds of rockets were fired from the Gaza Strip and thousands of Israeli airstrikes and bombs ravaged Gaza, killing over 250 Palestinians, the majority of whom were civilians, Egypt played a key role in facilitating a ceasefire. The diplomacy was well received by the United States administration, and was an important step toward consolidating Cairo’s influence, officials previously told Mada Masr. 

Yet planned next steps in the armistice were less simple, and a meeting between the Palestinian factions — primarily the Palestinian Authority, tasked with government in the West Bank, and the Hamas government of the Gaza Strip — fell through in June. 

One key point of dispute that emerged was how funds would be disbursed for reconstruction urgently needed to rebuild Gaza after the Israeli offensive in May, which wrought major damage to infrastructure networks including roads and services, and destroyed at least 1,000 residential units, razed five residential towers and three mosques to the ground, and damaged 17 hospitals and the strip’s only COVID-19 testing laboratory.

Both Israel and the US, however, have insisted that funds to reconstruct Gaza should not pass through the hands of Hamas, with US President Joe Biden stressing the point during a phone call to President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi in May. An Egyptian official told Mada Masr in June that Hamas refused to coordinate with the Palestinian Authority on the reconstruction.

Gaza Strip reconstruction funding was among the files that require follow-up, the government source said on Wednesday, adding that “the security demands of Israel” were also on the agenda, “especially after Hamas welcomed the arrival of the Taliban to the helm of power in Afghanistan.” After the Taliban reestablished power in Kabul on Sunday, Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh called the Taliban's Mullah Abdel Ghani Baradar, congratulating him on the “defeat of the US occupation.”

A security source told Mada Masr that Kamel’s visit is also intended to raise the level of coordination with both Hamas and the Palestinian Authority, adding that there may be a subsequent visit to the Palestinian territories and Gaza, as the Palestinian reconciliation talks remain deadlocked. The source noted that Egypt is working on resuming talks between Hamas and the Palestinian Authority and hopes to hold a meeting between the two factions in September.

At the same time as Kamel visited Tel Aviv, a high-level Israeli security delegation embarked on a visit to Sharm el Sheikh, the Israeli Kan 11 TV Channel reported without providing further information. 

The security source also told Mada Masr that Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett is set to visit Egypt in September, confirming Israeli media reports that Kamel invited Bennett to visit Egypt on behalf of Sisi.

Should Bennett’s visit materialize, it would be the first official visit by an Israeli prime minister since the January 2011 revolution.

Former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who was ousted by a coalition that formed in the aftermath of the May clashes between Israeli forces and Palestinians across the occupied territories, visited Egypt three times in the past 10 years, though none of these were announced.