Earlier this week, the Bloomberg news agency quoted a former senior Israeli official as saying that in recent years, Israel had carried out drone strikes in Sinai with Egypt’s consent.
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“We have always said that the moment we reach peace with the Palestinians, we will be able to achieve peaceful relations with the entire Arab world. but I have grown to think this process could also run in the opposite direction”, Netanyahu said.
The meeting is believed to lay the groundwork for Netanyahu’s official visit to Cairo, for talks with Egyptian President Abdel Fatah Al Sisi, slated for later this year.
The previous telephone conversation between Lavrov and Shoukry took place on June 7, with the two ministers focusing on the situation in Syria and the need to resume talks between Palestinians and Israelis. Two weeks ago, Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry met with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah.
“My visit to Israel today is a continuation of Egypt’s long-standing sense of responsibility towards peace for itself and all the peoples of the region”, Shoukry said on Sunday in Jerusalem, adding that “Egypt remains ready to contribute towards achieving this goal”.
Resolving the decades-old conflict would have a “far-reaching and dramatic and positive impact on the overall conditions of the Middle East region”, he added.
Shoukry’s trip is a “puzzling step, in light of the Israeli government’s open refusal of peace, and its attempts to annihilate the two-state solution and the right for self determination for the Arab-Palestinian nation”, it says in a statement, according to Haaretz.
Israel and Egypt signed a peace treaty in 1979.
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Jihadists in the peninsula bordering Israel and the Palestinian Gaza Strip have killed hundreds of soldiers and policemen in attacks since the army toppled Islamist president Mohamed Morsi in 2013.
