Egypt strongly condemned the attack on four ships near the territorial waters of the United Arab Emirates on Sunday, which was described as an act of sabotage. Egypt also condemned all illegal acts that would harm the national security of the UAE and safety of its land and sea borders.

In a statement, Egypt’s ministry of foreign affairs stressed its solidarity with the government and people of the UAE in facing all the challenges they might face, and confronting all attempts to destabilise the UAE.

Voting has begun in Egypt, in a referendum that could extend President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi's rule until 2030. Sisi came to power after a 2013 military coup, against Egypt’s first freely–elected President Mohamed Morsi.

A high-ranking IDF leader has revealed that Israel orchestrated the downfall of Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi and the rise of Abdel Fattah al-Sisi’s thinly disguised military dictatorship. Israel preferred this normalizing leader to his somewhat pro-Palestine predecessor.

Brigadier General Aryeh Eldad of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has claimed that Israel was behind the 2013 military coup that ousted Mohammed Morsi, Egypt’s first democratically elected president. Eldad made the claim in an article published in the Israeli newspaper Maariv.

In the article, Eldad asserted:

"The outbreak of the January revolution coincided with the Israeli security assessment that President-elect Mohamed Morsi, a Muslim Brotherhood man, intended to cancel the peace agreement with Israel and send more Egyptian military forces to the Sinai Peninsula."

Pop quiz: name the two largest (by far) recipients of U.S. foreign military aid and one other country which recently negotiated the biggest American arms sale deal in world history. Let’s call them the Big three (beneficiaries of largesse, that is).

Ready for the (not-so) shocking answers? So, the military dictatorship is Egypt – recipient of $1.3 billion in military aid per annum. The nation that conquered and annexed adjacent territory is Israel – the donee of some $3.1 billion in military aid each year; and, ironically, the state that US leaders regularly (if incorrectly) tout as the “only democracy in the Mideast.” And the charming, child-starving, woman-beheading regime: that’s the theocracy and absolute monarchy of Saudi Arabia – future owner (maybe) of a record $110 billion in US military equipment. Now that’s a proud lot!

Tens of thousands of Palestinians have rallied at the Israel-Gaza fence to mark the first anniversary of the "Great March of Return" protests, facing off against Israeli tanks and troops massed on the fortified perimeter.

Israeli forces on Saturday used live rounds, rubber bullets and tear gas on the protesters, killing a 17-year-old boy at a protest site east of Gaza city, and wounding at least 59 people, according to Gaza's health ministry.

Another Palestinian was killed in an overnight demonstration ahead of the main protest, the ministry said.

Palestinians are demanding the right to return to lands from which their families were violently expelled during the founding of Israel in 1948. They are also calling for an end to Israel's and Egypt's 12-year blockade of Gaza.

US President Donald Trump will host his Egyptian counterpart Abdel Fattah al-Sisi at the White House on April 9. Military, economic and counterterrorism cooperation between the two states will be discussed, the White House said on Friday. The two leaders will also discuss developments and shared priorities in the region, including enhancing regional economic integration and addressing ongoing conflicts, the statement said.

The Egyptian team tasked with mediating an agreement to end days of fighting in the Gaza Strip continued with its shuttle diplomacy Thursday afternoon, returning to Israel at around 1pm, after meeting with Hamas and other Palestinian militant groups.

The delegation, made up of Egyptian intelligence officials, returned from Gaza via the Erez Crossing, to convey the Hamas response to an Israeli proposal for restoring calm along the border.

gypt’s President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi held a tripartite summit with Jordanian King Abdullah II and Iraqi Prime Minister Adil Abdul-Mahdi on Sunday, during which they enacted several agreements that aimed to boost their relations.

Earlier on Sunday, Al-Sisi received King Abdullah at the presidential palace in Cairo, prior to the summit, and attended a military parade held in honour of King Abdullah.

During the Egyptian-Jordanian-Iraqi summit, the leaders highlighted their countries’ deep historical ties and stressed the importance of working together to enhance the level of coordination between the three countries.

Furthermore, the leaders reviewed the latest regional developments, and agreed to coordinate strategically among themselves and with the rest of the Arab countries to restore stability in the region and to find solutions to the crises facing it, especially the Palestinian cause.

An Egyptian singer has been banned from performing in her home country after suggesting that it does not respect free speech.

A video clip circulated online shows Sherine Abdel-Wahab, during a performance in Bahrain, saying: "Here I can say whatever I want. In Egypt, anyone who talks gets imprisoned."

Egypt's Musicians Union responded late Friday by barring the singer, popularly known by her first name, from performing. It also summoned her for questioning.

Egypt’s Foreign Ministry said on Friday that Cairo considers the Golan Heights as occupied Syrian land. The statement rejects a call by US President Donald Trump to recognize Israeli sovereignty over the territory captured in the 1967 Middle East war. The Egyptian ministry cited UN Security Council resolution 497 of 1981 which rejected Israel’s annexation of the territory.

Olmert, who offered an exclusive interview to Channel 13’s Udi Segal, said he did not think at the time that the shipyard building strategic weapons for Israel would sell submarines to Egypt.

The discovery of the giant gas field Tamar off the coast of Israel in 2009 was the beginning of a new period for the Eastern Mediterranean as an energy hot spot. More recently Exxon and Qatar Gas have discovered another giant gas field off the coast of Cyprus, and Italy’s Eni found more energy deposits off the coast of Egypt. To put the numbers into perspective, the Eastern Mediterranean contains approximately 2,100 billion cubic meters of gas compared to the EU’s consumption in 2017 which was 410 bcm. It shows that the recoverable reserves are more than sufficient to supply the entire EU for a couple of years.

US Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Joe Dunford issued a statement Monday denying weekend media reports that the US plans to leave around 1,000 troops in Syria, saying the reports are “factually incorrect.”

Dunford presented the current planned “residual force” as 200, saying that this hadn’t changed since February. The US announced 200 would stay on February 21, but on February 22 officially increased that number to 400.

It’s not clear from Dunford’s statement where the “incorrect” aspect of the new report, which came out of a Wall Street Journal, exists. That report suggested that the 1,000 figure was not yet finalized, but was being discussed. Dunford’s comments didn’t include any details on what is actually being discussed, but just that nothing was finalized.

Russia has signed a contract with Egypt for the supply of several dozen heavy Su-35 multi-role fighters, according to two top managers of defense industry enterprises.

According to them, the relevant agreement covers the supply of “over two dozen machines” and related parts to them in the sum of about $ 2 billion, entered into force at the end of 2018, and deliveries can begin as early as 2020–2021. The sources declined to disclose the cost of the contract, but noted that it “guarantees the capacity utilization of the manufacturer of the machine, the Komsomolsk-on-Amur Aviation Plant, for several years ahead.”

As the newspaper notes, in the coming years, along with the MiG-29M / M2 medium fighters supplied to Egypt, they should significantly increase the combat potential of the Egyptian air force fleet, which are still armed with outdated Soviet MiG-21s and Chinese J-7s.

Funeral prayers were held in Cairo and Sharqiya on Sunday to mourn the deaths of an officer and soldiers killed in an attack on Egypt's military in the Sinai Peninsula.

The Saturday's attack on the Egyptian army checkpoint in the restive Sinai had caused 15 casualties, while seven of the suspected Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL or ISIS) fighters were killed, the military said.

The breakdown of the military casualties was not immediately clear. Two security sources told the Reuters news agency some of the injuries were serious.

European Union officials have begun talks with counterparts in several Middle Eastern countries, including Egypt and Turkey, about proposed data-sharing deals that would allow Europol to exchange personal information about suspects with local law enforcement authorities.

In some circumstances, the deals could allow the transfer of data concerning a person’s race and ethnic origin, their political opinions and religious beliefs, trade-union memberships, genetic data and data concerning their health and sex life.

The deals are being sought by the EU as part of efforts to bolster counter-terrorism policing across the continent despite concerns being raised about the human rights records of the countries by the bloc’s own data protection watchdog.

Since the start of the year, Egypt has executed a number of prisoners convicted in cases in which several said they had been tortured into false confessions.

Egypt’s General Intelligence Service has earned around five billion Egyptian pounds (about $2.9 billion) from a recent consulting deal signed between the government and the Egyptian Media Group.

Well-informed sources at the country’s official Egyptian Radio and Television Union (ERTU) – also known as Maspero – reported the huge profits yesterday, telling the New Khaleej that the deal, which was signed late last month, was a “direct order by the Egyptian presidency in favour of the intelligence directorate, which owns the [Egyptian Media] group”.

Under the five-year agreement, the sources explained, Egyptian Media Group would implement plans to oversee 23 television stations and 76 radio stations, some of which would be merged and others which would be cancelled.

Israel Hayom has learned that alongside Jerusalem’s decision to postpone the transfer of Qatari funds to Hamas following the escalation on Israel’s border with the Gaza Strip, Egypt has issued the terrorist organization’s political bureau chief Ismail Haniyeh (pictured) an ultimatum.

Cairo has made it clear that Haniyeh must decide whether “Hamas takes its orders from Tehran or continues to implement the understandings for calm” formulated by the head of Egyptian intelligence Abbas Kamel.

A senior Egyptian intelligence official told Israel Hayom that senior Hamas members, chief among them Haniyeh, had contacted Kamel with the request that Israel be sent the message that “Hamas was not involved in the grave events on the border.”

The alliance between Israel and Egypt is now stronger than ever.

Egyptian ruler Abdulfattah al-Sisi acknowledged recently that the two countries have been cooperating to an unprecedented level on security in the Sinai peninsula. Following that admission, Israel and Egypt have reached a deal on their most significant economic cooperation to date.

Israel is taking part in preparations for establishing the Eastern Mediterranean Gas Forum. That gas market – to be based in Egypt – will include Jordan, Italy, Cyprus, Greece and the Palestinian Authority.

The forum aims to “create a regional gas market that serves the interests of its members by ensuring supply and demand, optimizing resource development, rationalizing the cost of infrastructure, offering competitive prices and improving trade relations,” Egypt’s petroleum ministry stated, according to Reuters.

Egypt’s President Abd al-Fattah al-Sisi recently spoke at a forum, where he in plain language told those who have moved or want to move to Europe.

“If you go to another country, you must follow their laws and culture, if not, don’t go there”, he said.

In November, al-Sisi attended the World Youth Forum in Sharm el Sheikh in Egypt. He was asked how he sees the fact that several European countries are now closing the door to those who want to migrate to Europe.

His answer was clear:

“Instead of asking me why Europe closes the door to us, you should ask why people in Afghanistan don’t take better care of their country. The same applies to Pakistan, Egypt, Syria, Libya, Iraq, Yemen and Somalia.”

Israel has confirmed it is in extensive talks with Egypt to build a new sub-sea natural gas pipeline between the two countries as part of a previously agreed $15 billion deal to export Israeli gas to Egypt over a decade. Most significant is that the new line would hugely expand Israel's export capacity to its southern Arab neighbor, taking it far beyond the maximum 7 billion cubic meters per year currently able to flow through the existing EMG pipeline to Sinai.

Israeli Energy Minister Yuval Steinitz proclaimed the ambitious project under negotiation to be part of broader "efforts to transform the eastern Mediterranean into an energy export hub on the doorstep of Europe," according to Bloomberg.

“There’s no final decision yet, but there are talks,” Steinitz told Bloomberg while attending the Cairo-sponsored first East Mediterranean Gas Forum, a cooperative forum aimed at expanding east Mediterranean energy transformation and joint ventures.

For Saied Abu Asker, 2018 will be remembered as the year he was shot with two explosive bullets.

He is among numerous Palestinians to have been injured while taking part in the Great March of Return. The protests – held on a regular basis since late March – have been called to demand that the rights of Palestine’s refugees be upheld.

Abu Asker has paid a heavy price for demanding his basic rights. The Israeli snipers who fired at him caused serious damage to the pelvis area of his body while protesting east of Jabaliya refugee camp in northern Gaza on 1 June.

It didn’t take long for the vise on Gaza’s long-suffering population to be tightened in the new year.

The Palestinian Authority, headed by Mahmoud Abbas in the occupied West Bank, withdrew its personnel from the Rafah border crossing between Gaza and Egypt overnight Sunday.

The move amounts to the effective closure of the sole point of exit and entry for the vast majority of Gaza’s more than two million residents.

Hamas authorities have resumed control over the Gaza side of the crossing, after having handed it over to the Palestinian Authority last November, but it is unclear whether Egypt will reopen Rafah.

Egypt has demanded that CBS not air an impending broadcast of a 60 Minutes interview with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, who had willingly sat down with Scott Pelley in New York for the segment.

According to CBS, "The 60 Minutes team was contacted by the Egyptian Ambassador shortly after and told the interview could not be aired," however the network was not swayed, but affirmed that "The interview will be broadcast on 60 Minutes, Sunday, January 6 at 7:00 p.m. ET/PT on CBS."

A military drill between six Red Sea countries was launched in Saudi Arabia on Sunday, according to the kingdom’s official SPA news agency.

The Red Wave 1 exercise brings together naval forces from Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, Sudan, Yemen and Djibouti. Observers from Somalia are also taking part in the drill.

“The exercise aims to strengthen maritime security of the countries bordering the Red Sea, protect territorial waters, enhance military cooperation and exchange combat expertise,” commander of Saudi Arabia’s Western Fleet, Major-General Saqr bin Mohammed al-Harbi, said.

The military drill is scheduled to continue until Thursday.

Egyptian archaeologists have discovered the tomb of a priest dating back more than 4,400 years in the pyramid complex of Saqqara south of the capital Cairo, authorities said Saturday.

"Today we are announcing the last discovery of the year 2018, it's a new discovery, it's a private tomb," Antiquities Minister Khaled el-Enany told an audience of invited guests including reporters.

"It is exceptionally well preserved, coloured, with sculpture inside. It belongs to a high official priest... (and) is more than 4,400 years old," he said.

The tomb belongs to "Wahtye", a high priest who served during the fifth dynasty reign of King Neferirkare, the antiquities ministry said.

Egypt has restricted the sale of yellow reflective vests to deter regime opponents from mimicking French protesters, as a copycat movement, dubbed the “red vests”, launched in nearby Tunisia.

The new measures in Egypt were quietly put in place ahead of next month’s seventh anniversary of the country’s Arab Spring uprising, as officials fear protests could erupt against the military-led government.

Security officials and retailers reported that industrial safety equipment dealers are now not permitted to sell the yellow vests to walk-in buyers, the “gilets jaunes” worn by French protesters in recent rallies and riots. Sellers are restricted to doing wholesale business deals with verified companies as long as they secure police permission. The officials told Associated Press (AP) told offenders would be punished but did not elaborate.

The Minister of Electricity and Renewable Energy, Mohamed Shaker, and head of the Nuclear Power Plant Authority Amjad al-Wakeel, will hold a meeting with officials of the Russian company Rosatom on the sidelines of President Abdul Fattah El-Sisi’s visit to Moscow.

Shaker told Daily News Egypt that the operation of the Dabaa nuclear station is proceeding normally, and the project needs time to implement, and denied the reported cancellation of the contract. “Rumours are absolutely untrue. We agreed on a timetable and identified the cost and completed the work on the project,” he stressed.

The meeting will include the follow-up of the current position of the Dabaa Nuclear Plant Project, which is being implemented, and reviewing the characteristics of the project, the specifications of the selection of companies participating in the operational work of the station, as well as setting the timetable for the implementation of the project.

Gaza's Health Ministry says 32 Palestinians have been wounded by Israeli fire during a mass protest along the beach near the Israeli frontier.

Protesters threw flaming tires over the fence Monday, while fishing boats hoisted Palestinian flags. Israeli forces responded with tear gas and live fire.

The ruling Hamas militant group has been staging border protests for the past six months in hopes of easing a crippling Israeli-Egyptian blockade.

The only promise that is new about the promised peace plan is the way it will be forced on the Palestinians: no one has promised that the plan itself will be new. With Saudi Arabia and Egypt—the outside—brought onside with the promise of continued military aid despite their crimes against humanity and violations of international law and the Palestinians weakened by being silenced, economically crushed and stripped of any friends to help them, the United States and Israel are now free to attempt to impose a peace plan on the Palestinians.

The Israeli news website Wallah revealed yesterday that the Egyptian delegation which visited Gaza on Saturday passed a message from Israel to Hamas, Al-Wattan Voice reported.

The Egyptians, the news website said, told Hamas that Israel is asking for an end to the demonstrations taking place near the fence along the eastern side of the Gaza Strip and to halt flying incendiary balloons.

According to the Israeli website the Egyptian intelligence delegation met with the Hamas leadership in Gaza and passed on the Israeli demands.

Years later, when I became an avid reader of history and military texts, it became clear to me that the collective Shoah dread into which we immersed ourselves was a manifestation of Jewish pre traumatic stress disorder (Pre TSD). We were tormented by a phantasmic fear. Neither the Syrians nor the Egyptian armies had plans to ‘destroy Israel,’ wipe out the Jewish state or ‘throw the Jews into the sea’. Their military objectives were, in fact, very limited. Neither the Egyptians nor the Syrians wished to expand their military ground operation beyond a few miles into the Sinai and the Golan Heights. Both Arab armies were dependent on Soviet ground to air missiles that severely limited Israeli air superiority above the battlefield. The Soviet missile umbrella provided about 10 miles of anti air cover and the Arab armies had no intent to proceed beyond that ‘safe’ zone.

: An Egyptian criminal court ordered the arrest of ousted President Hosni Mubarak's two sons on charges of stock market manipulation, state news agency MENA reported Saturday.

Alaa and Gamal Mubarak, with seven other men, are accused of violating stock market and central bank rules to make unlawful profits through dealing in shares of Al Watany Bank of Egypt.

They deny any wrongdoing.

Three other men including Yasser El Mallawany and Hassan Heikal, current and former board members respectively at Egyptian investment bank EFG-Hermes, were also arrested, a judicial source said.

The advisory also warns military activities linked to the bloody conflict in Syria have been ramped across Iran's airspace.

Tensions between Tehran and Washington are running high following Donald Trump’s controversial decision to pull out of the landmark Iran nuclear deal re-introduce economic sanctions last month.

Flight Service Bureau, which provides safety information on airspace to airlines, said "without seeming alarmist", the deteriorating relationship between the US and Iran must be taken into account when planning flights in Iran's airspace.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has authorised the release of $1.2 billion in military aid to Egypt, overriding previous human rights concerns that had held up funding.

The figure includes $1 billion for the current 2018 budget year and $195 million earmarked for 2017 which would have been returned to the treasury had it not been spent by the end of the month.

The State Department informed Congress of the move on Friday; congressmen have 15 days to contest the national security waivers allowing the money, known as foreign military financing (FMF), to be delivered.

In July, Pompeo also lifted $195 million in FMF that was originally listed for 2016, but which former secretary of state Rex Tillerson had frozen due to the continuing concerns over the state of human rights under Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi.

Rows of military vehicles are staged to be loaded on a barge at the Port of Shuaiba, Kuwait, Aug. 25, 2018. The vehicles will be shipped to Egypt for Bright Star 2018, a multilateral U.S. Central Command training exercise, held with the Arab Republic of Egypt in Egypt.

Egypt’s military says it will host war games with U.S. troops next month for the second straight year.

Thursday's statement from the military's spokesman says the "Bright Star" exercise will run from Sept. 8-20.

U.S. Central Command said in a Thursday statement that approximately 800 U.S. troops will participate.

Egypt has allowed “some 250 tonnes of domestic gas” to Gaza nearly a month after Israel shut down its only goods crossing and prevented the transfer of fuel into the strip, a Palestinian official told Anadolu news agency on Sunday.

The agency quoted Khalil Shakfa, the head of the General Authority of Petroleum, saying that “some 250 tonnes of domestic gas has been allowed into Gaza.”

Meanwhile, Sky News Arabia reported that “11 trucks of domestic gas on Monday entered Gaza through Salah al-Din Gate, located near Rafah crossing,” according to sources.

However, the Egyptian authorities have not confirmed or denied the reports yet.

Egypt bears as much responsibility for the Gaza Strip as Israel does, an Israeli cabinet minister said on Monday, in remarks that could upset Cairo as it tries to avoid being drawn back into the Palestinian enclave while brokering truce talks there.

In parallel to UN mediation, Egypt has used its contacts with both Israel and the dominant Palestinian Islamist group Hamas to discuss ways of calming a more than the three-month-old surge in confrontations along the Gaza-Israel border.

But some Egyptian officials say they would resist any attempt by Israel, or its US ally, to shift to Cairo the onus for addressing Gaza’s long-term governance or economic problems.

Cairo – The oil and gas resources that Egypt could benefit from are just talk and cannot even be exploited as Israel manipulates these resources and seeks to maintain its control over them by all means possible.

When Israel undertook security measures to protect gas fields in the Mediterranean Sea, including renting a military unit in Cyprus until 2016, it ignited a crisis regarding the right to exploit the oil and gas fields in the Mediterranean. Due to the fact that Israel established the Iron Dome missile defense system to intercept missiles along its coast and off its territorial waters, in addition to its intelligence activities, it was able to monitor the work being done in these economically viable waters.

An Egyptian court has sentenced 75 people to death for participating in a 2013 protest against the overthrow of the country's democratically elected president, Mohamed Morsi.

Senior members of the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood organisation were among those ordered executed by the Cairo Criminal Court on Saturday for their involvement with the sit-in demonstration at Rabaa Square in the Egyptian capital, Cairo.

The rulings will be referred to Egypt's chief Islamic legal authority, the Grand Mufti, for a non-binding opinion.

Egyptian law requires any capital sentence to be referred to the Grand Mufti before any execution can take place.

When she went to Egypt for vacation, Mona el-Mazbouh surely didn’t expect to end up in prison. But after the 24-year-old Lebanese tourist posted a video in which she complained of sexual harassment—calling Egypt a lowly, dirty country and its citizens “pimps and prostitutes”—el-Mazbouh was arrested at Cairo’s airport and found guilty of deliberately spreading false rumors that would harm society, attacking religion, and public indecency. She was sentenced to eight years in prison.

The video that el-Mazbouh posted was ten minutes long, and went viral on Facebook, causing an uproar in Egypt. In the video, el-Mazbouh also expressed anger about poor restaurant service during Ramadan and complained of her belongings being stolen. Egyptian men and women posted videos in response to her original video, prompting el-Mazbouh to delete the original video and post a second video on Facebook apologizing to Egyptians.

An unofficial ceasefire reached overnight Friday-Saturday between Israel and Hamas came after Egypt warned the Palestinian terror group that Israel would launch a war “in two hours” if Hamas responded to IDF retaliatory strikes in Gaza following the killing of an IDF soldier by Palestinian sniper fire, Israeli television reported Saturday.

Channel 10 news also reported that Egypt threatened to impose sanctions on Hamas if it does not end the launch of incendiary airborne devices toward Israeli territory.

In return for honoring these conditions, Hamas demanded Israel ease restrictions on the flow of goods into Gaza, the report said. Hamas also called for Egypt to keep open the Rafah border crossing and to press Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to pay the salaries of PA employees in Gaza.

Last week, Egyptian President Abd al-Fatah al-Sisi announced the opening of the Rafah border crossing with Gaza for the entire month of Ramadan, which he said was “in order to ensure the easing of the burdens on the brothers in the Gaza Strip.”

The crossing, which serves as the main gateway to the outside world for the 2 million Palestinians besieged in Gaza, has remained largely closed since Sisi’s rise to power.

We spoke to several Palestinians — students going abroad to study or in search of jobs, people traveling to reunite with families, and injured protesters seeking treatment in Jordan — as they waited for their chance to leave Gaza. The journey out of Gaza is far from simple, as only a select number of Palestinians with permission are allowed to leave.

A large Egyptian aid convoy carrying medicines and food supplies crossed the borders on its way to the Gaza Strip upon instructions by President Abdel Fattah El Sisi as part of efforts to ease the sufferings of the brotherly Palestinian people in the restive beleaguered enclave.

The convoy which was welcomed by the Palestinian side after entering into the Palestinian side of the borders heading for Gaza, includes medical supplies badly needed by the Palestinian hospitals.

President Sisi issued directives to keep Rafah land border crossing open throughout the holy fasting month of Ramadan to alleviate the sufferings of Gazans after violent escalations that followed the US relocation of its Israeli embassy to Jerusalem on Monday.

Egypt and Israel have blocked Turkish aircraft from using their airports to transport thousands of Palestinians wounded by Israeli troops during protests in Gaza, Turkey’s deputy prime minister has said.

Recep Akdag made the announcement on Wednesday, state-run Anadolu Agency reported, amid a growing rift between Ankara and Tel Aviv over Israeli massacres of Palestinian protesters.

Israeli forces killed at least 60 Palestinians and wounded over 3,000 others mostly with live gunfire on Monday during protests against the transfer of the US embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

Israeli forces shot dead two more protesters on Tuesday as Palestinians marked the Nakba, or “catastrophe”, commemorating the more than 700,000 Palestinians who were expelled in the 1948 war.

Since border protests and clashes began on March 30, 116 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire across the Gaza Strip.

But there’s a stupendous historical irony to Israel’s manufactured outrage: Israel itself claimed that a far less stringent embargo by Egypt in 1967 was a legitimate casus belli for Israel to attack Egypt (which led to Israel seizing control of Gaza and eventually imposing the embargo on it).

Israel opened fire first during the Six-Day War on June 5, 1967, with an air and land attack on Egypt. But, Israel declared, Egypt had actually started the war several weeks before, when it blockaded the Straits of Tiran, which prevented Israel from shipping goods through the Red Sea.

But if it were legal for Israel to bomb and invade Egypt in 1967 and then occupy Palestinian land for decades, it logically follows that Palestinians in Gaza have had the right to attack and occupy Israel ever since the Israeli blockade began in 2007. Fair’s fair.

Palestinian protests on the Gaza-Israel border have dropped off over the past two days, with Israel on Wednesday citing “Egyptian efforts” to restore calm after dozens of Palestinians were killed by Israeli gunfire. Gaza’s dominant Islamist Hamas movement denied that it was under pressure from neighboring Egypt to scale back the six-week-old demonstrations, Reuters reports.

Russia views positively Egypt’s decision against sending its troops to Syria as was proposed by Washington, Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said after negotiations between Russian and Egyptian foreign and defense ministers in the 2+2 format on Monday.

“We touched upon this issue in the context of discussing the Syria situation, in the context of discussing actions of the so-called foreign players, including, of course, the United States, because it is precisely its idea to invite Arab countries to send their contingents to the Syrian Arab Republic,” the Russian foreign minister said.

Even by the standards of Egypt’s dirty war the video circulating this week of a young boy pleading for his mother moments before he was shot in central Sinai was heartbreaking.

When it comes to Egypt we hear a lot of figures – 60,000 political prisoners, 1,000 protesters massacred in a single day, 378 enforced disappearances in a year – but as the numbers climb we have become desensitised to the scale of oppression taking place in this North African country, once celebrated for its Arab Spring uprising.

The video of the young boy reminds us how horribly wrong it all went, and that behind each and every extrajudicial killing carried out by Egyptian authorities there is a person with a family, a life, a world.

Nearly everyone loses by President Donald Trump’s decision on Tuesday to withdraw from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) relating to Iran’s nuclear energy program and to reinstate the “highest level” of sanctions while also threatening secondary sanctions on any country that “helps” the Iranians. The whole world loses because nuclear proliferation is a disaster waiting to happen and Iran will now have a strong incentive to proceed with a weapons program to defend itself from Israel and the United States. If Iran does so, it will trigger a regional nuclear arms race with Saudi Arabia and Egypt undoubtedly seeking weapons of their own.

Former Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul-Gheit has for the first time confirmed that Israel has on numerous times requested land swaps in an effort to resolve the Palestine-Israel conflict, Arabi21 reported yesterday.

Aboul-Gheit, who is currently the secretary of the Arab League, revealed he witnessed the land swap request that was repeated four times. He did not say who else requested the land swap.

“There were some illusions between 2003 and 2006,” he said, while giving a speech for the Egyptian army marking the liberation of Sinai. “I was a witness to these requests when I was a foreign minister. They said: Let’s exchange lands with you.”

Cairo Administrative Court referred on Tuesday a lawsuit demanding the suspension of the approval of natural gas imports from Israel, for violating the Egyptian Constitution and Law No 196 of 2017 regulating the gas market to the State Council Commissioner Authority (SCCA).

The lawsuit alleges that allowing natural gas imports from the “Zionist entity” endangers the national security of the country, carries a negative impact on the Egyptian economy, and threatens societal peace, which rejects normalisation Israel.

In a result that comes as no shock to Egyptians and the rest of the world, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi has won the presidential elections with 97 percent of the votes, final results showed, securing another four-year term.

The elections were criticised as a one-man show with no credible opposition, as at least six other candidates pulled out, were prosecuted, or jailed.

Past economic agreements with Israel have been controversial in Egypt, where support for the Palestinians runs high. But this major gas deal adds to growing strategic and diplomatic ties between the countries.

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi has been reelected for a second term with 92 percent of the vote, preliminary results showed on Thursday, but turnout of just 40 percent dented his push for popular legitimacy.

Israel would be facing terror attacks from the Sinai without the border fence, but even worse, says Netanyahu, the entry of over a million migrants

Egyptian military employs electronic warfare measures against terrorists in Sinai, blocking cell reception in southern Israel; Israeli military and political officials in talks with counterparts in Cairo in effort to resolve the three-weeks-long crisis, so far unsuccessfully.

Less than two weeks before the Israeli energy giant Delek Drilling announced a $15 billion deal to pump natural gas to Egypt, one of its board members, Malcolm Hoenlein, told a newspaper that the United States should be “standing up for” Egypt’s president, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, despite his troubling human rights record.

“You can criticize and you can push for human rights and do all those things,” Hoenlein said. “At the same time you’ve got to recognize the realities that these countries face.”

Hoenlein did not speak to the newspaper as a Delek Drilling board member. Instead, he spoke in his more familiar role: as the prominent leader of one of the American Jewish community’s most powerful foreign and domestic policy advocacy groups. As the head of the not-for-profit Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, Hoenlein has represented American Jews in meetings with the top levels of Israeli, Arab and U.S. political leadership for decades.

Israel and Saudi Arabia have reportedly held secret talks in Egypt’s capital, Cairo. According to reports, the Cairo talks dealt with several issues, including economic interests. The secret negotiations signal that Israel is no longer the greatest enemy in the region.

Slowly, surely and increasingly openly, Abdulfattah al-Sisi, the Egyptian president, is moving his country closer to Israel.

This week, it was a $15 billion gas deal that will see Delek, an Israeli company, supply Egypt with natural gas over a 10-year period.

A “joyous day,” Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, proclaimed when the news broke.

“We have scored a key goal,” echoed al-Sisi a few days later as he tried to distance his government from the deal by emphasizing, in what the egypt today website characterized as an “important speech,” that this was purely a private sector deal.

The US has blocked Franco-Egyptian negotiations on the sale of additional Rafale fighter jets to the Egyptian Air Force by refusing to export an American component aboard the Scalp cruise missile, French outlet La Tribune reported.

Alexandre Vautravers, an official at the Geneva Center for Security Policy (GCSP), discussed with Sputnik the impact of US companies being in the chain of contractors on European military suppliers.

"It would be great if France's manufacturing industry could produce entirely French products, but we should take into account the development cost of each component in a complicated missile like Scalp. What if no country can afford purchasing these missiles," Vautravers said.

Israel has joined forces with Egypt's military to smash ISIS militants in Nothern Sinai.

Unmarked Israeli drones, helicopters and jets have carried out a covert air campaign to rid Egypt of Islamic terrorists, for more than two years.

The Foreign Ministry of Egypt condemned the Turkish state’s “unacceptable” attack on Afrin, calling it an intervention against and violation of Syrian lands.

In a statement about the operation, the Foreign Ministry pointed out that Turkey negatively affected the political efforts for the ending of terror in Syria, saying; “The attitude of Egypt towards military methods is clear as attacks against our Syrian brothers and sisters are increasing.”

On the other hand, Deputy Chairman of the Federation Council of the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation, Frants Klintseviç stated that “Russia will ask Turkey to end its operation on Afrin at the United Nations.”

In a Facebook post about the invasion attempt, top Russian official Konstantin Kosaçev said; “Disturbing news are coming from Syria. The “Anti-terrorist operation” announced by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdo?an causes nothing but concern.”

Hundreds of Muslim demonstrators have stormed a Coptic church in Egypt calling for it to be demolished.

A hostile mob wreaked havoc in the building by wrecking sacred objects and attacking worshippers after gathering outside during Friday prayers.

During the brief siege the demonstrators chanted offensive slogans and called for the church's demolition, the diocese in Atfih said.

The wounded were transferred to a nearby hospital after security guards dispersed the mob. The nature of their injuries is not known.