Cairo's two faces: 'Egypt has no interest in Israel defeating Hamas'

Lt. Col. Eli Dekel, a former intelligence officer who specializes in the study of Egypt, spoke with Maariv, he was asked if Egypt is interested in weakening Hamas?

"In my opinion, Egypt, since 1956, since the Suez Crisis, has had a huge interest in bleeding Israel continuously," Dekel said.

"Since we retreated from Sinai in the Suez Crisis under enormous pressure from the Americans, yes. Even then, the Americans were involved. The Egyptians, in return, pledged not to harm us from the Israel-Egypt border, and indeed, they stood by it," he said.

"There were no attacks from the Suez War until the Six-Day War. But, what we did do, and it's clear that we did, is that they immediately went and established the so-called Gaza Fedayeen."

"They sent an officer with the rank of lieutenant colonel to the Gaza Strip, who will believe and bankroll terrorist acts against Israel. Even then, they were interested in spilling our blood, although not from their border, but through the Gazans."

"Not only did they found the Fedayeen, but Egypt also had a hand in establishing the Fatah movement, and even much more than a hand. They trained Fatah, they helped establish it, and the Fatah movement sent their brigade to fight against us on Egyptian soil in the Yom Kippur War.

"They have a long-standing interest for many years to spill our blood and exhaust us through the Gazan fighters. Therefore, they have an interest from the day the peace agreement was signed until now to do the same thing, which the peace agreement does not allow them to harm us directly. So the Gazans do their job.

"Only there is a problem here, which is that the Gazans began to be inclined toward the Muslim Brotherhood - a movement that opposes the Egyptian government - which is a different type of Islam. The roles flipped."

The double-edged sword

"On the one hand, in Gaza, there is Hamas, controlled by the Muslim Brotherhood, which is a movement that President Abdul-Fattah al-Sisi overthrew by force of arms. He staged a military coup against the legal and legitimate rule of a president from the Muslim Brotherhood [Mohamed Morsi].

"Egyptians live in a kind of duality: on the one hand, they see with open eyes the Muslim Brotherhood growing in the Gaza Strip, and on the other hand, they want to harm Israel. They live with this dissonance, that on the one hand Hamas - are not exactly supporters of Egypt and in the depths of their hearts they are also happy to topple al-Sisi, who deposed the incumbent President Morsi, on the other hand - they want to hurt us.

"Hamas in Gaza, in their wisdom, do not rely only on poor Egypt. So they started turning their eyes towards Qatar, which is aligned with the Muslim Brotherhood, so Hamas has some admirers."

"Wealthy admirers like Iran and Qatar who push the money and an Egyptian admirer - admittedly poorer, but all the weapons flow through them, and this is how they have lived since the Jewish expulsion from the Gaza Strip, what is known in washed-up language as 'disengagement.'

"Therefore, Egypt has an interest in continuing to hurt us from the Gaza side, and on the other hand, they have an interest in dwarfing Hamas so that it will be small and weak and listen to Egypt.

"Therefore, Egypt has no interest in us destroying Hamas. Egypt has no interest in us winning any kind of war. Indeed, not if it has invested billions of dollars over the years in arming Hamas and so on, and it will not want to lose this asset."

"On the other hand, it is very happy that Israel is beating and cutting it down to size, but it will make every effort, as much as it can, to prevent the [total] destruction of Hamas, which is the goal of the State of Israel after October 7," Dekel concluded.