A border incident between Israeli and Egyptian forces is the latest indication of just how sour relations have turned between the two neighbours since the outbreak of the bloody war in Gaza last year.
There are growing fears that these tensions are reaching the boiling point following the incident at the Rafah border crossing.
An Egyptian soldier was killed in Rafah with reports from Israeli sources suggesting that there was a skirmish between Israeli troops and Egyptian soldiers.
The incident has prompted an investigation by the military authorities in both Israel and Egypt, as tensions deteriorate between the two former foes over the invasion of Gaza which began last October.
This followed a deadly incursion inside Israel by the Palestinian militant group Hamas in which over 1,200 Israelis were killed.
Israel’s retaliatory invasion has left a trail of death and destruction in its wake.
Over 4,000 people, a significant number of them women and children, have been killed in aerial bombardments and skirmishes with Hamas militants in Gaza ever since.
According to the weekly report of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation media observatory on the Israeli invasion, 1, 914 Palestinians have been killed between May 21 – 27, 2024, drawing condemnation from much of the world including Egypt which opposes the military operation on the Gaza section of the Rafah crossing as they pursue Hamas.
Egypt has not hidden its support for the Palestinians against Israel and has condemned the continued incursion in Gaza while championing a campaign by the Arab and Muslim world against it.
Although the Israeli military claims that an operation by its troops includng air strikes killed some senior Hamas figures, Egypt condemned the attack as targeting and killing unarmed civilians, a claim which Israel says it is investigating.
Egypt is stridently opposed to Hamas’ tactics to liberate the Palestinians from ‘Israeli bondage’ and has maintained a blockade of its border with Gaza since 2006 when the militants were voted into office.
However, it has increasingly regarded the incursion into Gaza as ‘military aggression against defenseless civilians’, causing President Abdel Fattal El-Sisi and his government a serious foreign policy dilemma towards Tel Aviv in recent months.
Since the assassination of Anwar Sadat in 1981, successive Egyptian leaderships have observed the terms of its 1979 deal to disengage militarily against its former enemy with whom Egypt fought three bitter conflicts, the last of which was the Yom Kippur or Ramadan War of 1973.
Since then there has been relative peace between Egypt and Israel although periodic tensions have erupted particularly over the issue of the Palestinians.
The militant group was created as a branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, which was blamed for Sadat’s assassination and therefore blacklisted as a terrorist organisation.
However, Egypt’s role as mediator means it has been in contact with Hamas officials and the Israelis with a view to finding a definitive end to the 7-month-long conflict, the carnage of which has caused global outrage.
It had also culminated in a class action lawsuit for genocide at the International Court of Justice which last week issued a ruling ordering Israel to stop its Rafan offensive, a call apparently ignored by the Israelis.
WN/as/APA