Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi has taken a “strategic decision to deepen ties with Israel,” a report in Globes has said in recent days.
The report noted that el-Sisi is “striving to deepen economic and commercial ties.”
“This new approach can be attributed, among other things, to the major success of the Abraham Accords, which have helped promote economic deals signed between Israel and Egypt themselves, and private companies from the two countries,” it added.
A second factor listed by the report is Egypt’s need for Israeli assistance with the U.S. administration, “which is pressing Cairo on human rights.”
Meanwhile, the energy sector has been over the past decade “one of the areas in which deals between Israel and Egypt have flourished,” said the report, stating that pipelines “have been laid and sales agreements signed and also implemented. Now, as part of the new approach that el-Sisi has adopted, these deals have been expanded to include Jordan.”
According to Globes, Chevron, which has a near 40 percent stake in Israel’s offshore Leviathan gas field and a 25% stake in the Tamar gas field, signed a deal with Jordanian gas pipeline company Fajr for conveying gas from Leviathan and Tamar to Jordan through Israel, and then south to Egypt via the Jordanian Red Sea city of Aqaba under the Red Sea.
