Minister’s Remark Seen as Confirmation of Egyptian-Israeli Security Cooperation

In what many are calling an inadvertent slip of the tongue, Israel’s energy minister has apparently confirmed details of the security relationship between Egypt and Israel that have only been guessed at until now. While it’s been no secret that the two nations share the common enemy Hamas and its patrons, it’s standard fare in the Middle East for governments to refuse to confirm or deny reports of cooperation between any regional player and Israel. But on Saturday, while addressing a group in the southern city of Be’er Sheva, Minister Yuval Steinitz, a confidante of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, in a response to a question about the terror tunnels being built by Hamas as platforms for attacking Israel, explained that next door in Egypt they are flooding them, a tactic that is effective for tunnels of certain dimensions. But he – seemingly inadvertently – added that “… [Egyptian President Abdel Fatteh] Al-Sissi did that, to some degree, at our request.” In the course of his remarks, Steinitz also said “the security cooperation between Israel and Egypt has never been better.” More than a benign slip of the tongue, Steinitz was in violation of Israel’s military censorship rules by virtue of the information he provided. Media pundits, meanwhile, have been pondering whether his unusual efforts to walk back his comments were prodded by the prime minister and/or word from Cairo that the Egyptians are not happy with the revelation.