According to a source from the French newspaper Figaro, the Egyptian secret services warned their Israeli colleagues several times that Hamas was preparing something very important. Unfortunately, the Tel Aviv 007s underestimated the important information, according to a former French 007 who knows the Egyptian services in depth. Sources close to the office of the Israeli Prime Minister, Benyamin Netanyahu, denied the existence of such a warning and said that such news can only damage the government at such a delicate moment in the throes of a dramatic emergency.
The former French intelligence official who knows the Middle East well claims that the Egyptian services are very active in Gaza with their own agents in the field because they are directly interested in the stability of the area. Today, Egyptian fears are accentuated because they fear that the Israeli military push from north to south will lead the inhabitants of Gaza to seek refuge in their nation. For now, Egypt has closed the gates, trying to mediate to open only one as a humanitarian corridor.
Egypt, which administered the Gaza Strip from 1948 until its occupation by Israel in 1967, had excellent relations with the Palestinian Authority when the latter controlled Gaza from 1994 until Hamas ousted it with force in 2007. Egypt, the Palestinian Authority and Israel share the same fear towards the Muslim Brotherhood, whose Palestinian branch is Hamas and whose Egyptian matrix led the country from 2012 to 2013, after winning the elections following the overthrow of Hosni Mubarak.
"Since Hamas took power in Gaza in 2007, relations between Egyptian intelligence and Palestinian Islamists have not disintegrated“, the French source told Figaro.
Hamas has a liaison office in the Egyptian capital. These ties have allowed Cairo to act as a mediator in previous episodes of war between Israel and Hamas. The Egyptians are facilitators, explains the former French agent, the only breathing space for the Palestinians of Gaza towards the Arab world is the Rafah crossing with Egypt. Their services can then recruit almost any source they want and extort deals between Israelis and Palestinians.
There is little doubt that, once weapons are laid down, negotiations between Israel and Islam will pass through Cairo for security aspects and Qatar for political and financial issues. Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi stepped up contacts with other Arab leaders on Monday to stop the escalation. While the Israeli-Egyptian peace has been at a standstill since 1979, the security cooperation between the Mossad and Cairo intelligence is also good because Egypt needs Israel in the fight against the jihadist cells of Daesh, based in the desert of Sinai.
However, this cooperation is kept under wraps so as not to offend lingering anti-Israeli sentiment among Egyptians, as evidenced by Sunday's murder of two Israeli tourists in Alexandria by a policeman. While relations between Egypt and Hamas seriously deteriorated after the overthrow of President Mohammed Morsi, leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, in 2013, they have since improved since 2017. Placing its national interests above ideological considerations, Cairo it welcomed Ismael Haniyeh, head of the political bureau of Hamas, based in Qatar, for the first time that year. However, Egyptian intelligence remains highly vigilant towards the Palestinian Islamist movement on a number of other issues.
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