Egypt’s President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi said in an interview that the Mideast region needs to cooperate to defeat a worsening terrorist threat that has led to a “ferocious war” in Egypt and created the danger of a few countries “sliding into failure”.
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Presidential spokesman Alaa Youssef told reporters in New York that “when the Egyptian president spoke about relations between Arab countries and Israel, he stressed that would not happen except after a solution to the Palestinian issue and a declaration of a Palestinian state according to the 4 June 1967 borders, with East Jerusalem as its capital”, according to al-Ahram.
Israel’s calls for the resumption of talks with Palestinians is becoming increasingly serious as Netanyahu Sunday welcomed the Egyptian president’s appeal for talks between Palestine and Israel to end an open-ended conflict which has affected both parties.
In an interview with The Associated Press after his address to the United Nations General Assembly, Sisi said Egypt is engaged in a “ferocious war” with terrorists in Sinai which required Cairo’s military to be “augmented” in order to win.
He ended with an optimistic message for the future of Egypt: “I am confident that with God’s help, the Egyptian people will be able to achieve their highest aspiration for themselves, their country, their region, and the whole world”.
Egypt has been battling an insurgency in the Sinai by extremist groups that have pledged allegiance to Islamic State.
“Let it suffice to look at the map and find countries that are suffering from failure”, Sisi said. There is the problem of the refugees that are flowing into Europe.
Resolving the Palestinian question, he said, would “change the face of the region and … bring about enormous improvement to the situation”.
In that vein, the Egyptian leader cited what he called an “improving” relationship with the United States.
We have all witnessed Libyas descent along a downward spiral when the forces of extremism announced their presence through actions that contradict the principles of Islam and humanity, he said, citing the slaughter of Egyptians in Libya earlier this year.
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“Prime Minister Netanyahu urges PA President Mahmoud Abbas once again to return immediately to the negotiating table to advance the diplomatic process”, the statement said.
