While a lot of the focus of Israel’s relationship with Egypt lately has centered on rare critical comments from the Egyptian Foreign Ministry related to the ongoing occupation of Palestine, the reality of the situation is that since the Egyptian military launched a coup d’etat in summer of 2013, ties with Israel couldn’t be better.
Israeli officials today were bragging up their great ties with the Egyptian junta, with an unnamed former official confirming that Israel has launched several drone strikes against targets inside Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, with the “blessing” of the junta.
Egypt launched a major offensive into Sinai immediately following the coup, accusing local tribal factions of being in league with the ousted elected government. This spiraled quickly into a full-scale war with an Islamist group, which is now an ISIS affiliate.
Israel, which endorsed the coup as good for Mideast stability, has backed the junta from day one, and while it is unsurprising that they’d be backing the junta with military support, this is the first real admission to that effect that it has been ongoing, a fact the junta would doubtless like to keep secret.