The New York Times this weekend ran a story on Israel and Egypt's deepening military cooperation. While various aspects of this collaboration have already been revealed in recent years, the latest report sheds new light on the scope, depth and intimacy of this relationship.
The Israeli Air Force, it appears, has carried out nearly 100 airstrikes in the Sinai Peninsula against Islamic State targets in coordination with, or even at the request of the Egyptians. The presidential palace in Cairo not only authorized but gave its blessing to this cooperation. It did, however, keep some of its own military officers and, of course, its citizens, in the dark.
Israel and Egypt have a common interest in fighting terror. Even before it launched an all-out war against the Egyptian army in Sinai, Islamic State's Sinai branch had already attacked Israel on several occasions (the terrible attack on Highway 12 in the summer of 2011, along with multiple rocket attacks on Eilat). We also know that Islamic State's Sinai branch works closely with Hamas, helping it perpetrate attacks against Israel and smuggling weapons into the Gaza Strip.
To fight ISIS, the Egyptians needed the long and apparently covert arm of the Israeli Air Force which, incidentally, has not been active only in the south. Just last year, former Air Force chief Maj. Gen. Amir Eshel revealed that the air force had carried out over 100 missions in Syria as well, the majority of which were also kept out of the public eye.
Still, a word of caution is in order. If the reports about Israeli-Egyptian cooperation are accurate, the development would certainly be conducive toward bolstering the Egyptian security establishment's commitment to peace, and even its partnership with Israel. However, these reports have little hope of swaying public opinion in Egypt. It certainly doesn't have the power to advance the cold peace, currently characterized purely by shared interests and military cooperation, beyond the boundaries of the military institutions involved in it today.
For this reason, in particular, it is important to take note of another New York Times exposé, revealing that former U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry proposed that within the framework of efforts to finalize an Israel-Palestinian peace deal, Cairo and Amman would assume security responsibility for Israel. This idea is impractical, even delusional. It demonstrates yet again a detachment from reality and a blind pursuit of wishful thinking. After all, Israeli-Egyptian cooperation, as it is portrayed in the New York Times article, rests on Israel's operational and intelligence gathering capabilities and on Egypt's desire, not to mention its need, to utilize them. The distance between this utilitarian relationship and Egypt and Jordan ever coming to Israel's defense, therefore, is still significant.
