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Egypt’s Sisi confirms military cooperation with Israel against Sinai fighters

SHAFAQNA Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi in an interview confirmed for the first time that Cairo’s military are cooperating with Israel against armed groups in the northern Sinai.

Excerpts from the interview released by CBS over last week also showed President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi denies there are political prisoners in Egypt, where he has overseen one of the largest crackdowns on dissent in the country’s modern history since the overthrow by the military, then led by him, of a divisive president.

CBS, which will air the full interview on its show 60 Minutes, said it has rejected a request by the Egyptian government not to show it. It did not say which part of the president’s comments Cairo objected to, but the cooperation with Israel, appears to be the most contentious part.

The attempt to stop the broadcast was the latest indication of the growing tension between Egypt’s public hostility and its private collaboration with the Jewish state.

Egypt, a country where most people still view their neighbour as their sworn enemy and where trade unions and most political parties are vehemently opposed to the “normalisation” of relations with Israel.

Egyptian officials and the state-owned Egyptian media continue to rail against Israel as a dangerous enemy, and as recently as 2016 the Egyptian Parliament voted overwhelmingly to expel a lawmaker for the offense of hosting a dinner with the Israeli ambassador to Cairo. (A fellow member of Parliament was so outraged he threw a shoe at the culprit.)

According to the excerpts, el-Sisi was asked if his country’s cooperation with Israel was the closest ever between the two countries. “That is correct… We have a wide range of cooperation with the Israelis,” he responded, ALJAZEERA reported.

Israeli officials have publicly praised security cooperation with el-Sisi’s Egypt, which has successfully secured Israel’s permission to deploy troops, artillery, and helicopter gunships close to the Israeli border to fight the armed groups in contravention of the peace treaty’s limitations on the number of troops and weapons Egypt can have in the region.

Outside of public view, however, Egypt’s military and intelligence agencies have worked closely with their Israeli counterparts for nearly four decades, since the Camp David treaty of 1978. That cooperation has grown far closer since the military coup that brought Mr. Sisi to power in 2013, nytimes reported.

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