With the Middle East engulfed in war, Israel has sought to stay uninvolved in the turmoil while keeping its borders reasonably secure. Moshe Yaalon, who served until recently as Israel’s defense minister, and previously as the IDF chief of staff, discusses Jerusalem’s current approach to the region, including its policy of nonintervention in “internal Arab conflicts,” its response to terror, and its pursuit and maintenance of alliances with Sunni states not dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood. In his view, the greatest threat to Israel remains the Iranian nuclear program, and he urges the U.S. to take a stronger stance against the Islamic Republic. (Interview by Robert Satloff. Video, 92 minutes. A summary is available at the link below.)

On June 3, an Egyptian policeman crossed the border into Israel and killed three soldiers. Jonathan Schanzer and Natalie Ecanow urge President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi to respond by visiting the Jewish state as a show of goodwill:

Such a dramatic gesture is not without precedent: in 1997, a Jordanian soldier opened fire on a group of Israeli schoolgirls visiting the “Isle of Peace,” a parcel of farmland previously under Israeli jurisdiction that Jordan leased back to Israel as part of the Oslo peace process. In a remarkable display of humanity, King Hussein of Jordan, who had only three years earlier signed a peace agreement with Israel, traveled to the Jewish state to mourn with the families of the seven girls who died in the massacre.

That massacre unfolded as a diplomatic cold front descended on Jerusalem and Amman. . . . Yet a week later, Hussein flipped the script. “I feel as if I have lost a child of my own,” Hussein lamented. He told the parents of one of the victims that the tragedy “affects us all as members of one family.”

While security cooperation [between Cairo and Jerusalem] remains strong, the bilateral relationship is still rather frosty outside the military domain. True normalization between the two nations is elusive. A survey in 2021 found that only 8 percent of Egyptians support “business or sports contacts” with Israel. With a visit to Israel, Sisi can move beyond the cold pragmatism that largely defines Egyptian-Israeli relations and recast himself as a world figure ready to embrace his diplomatic partners as human beings. At a personal level, the Egyptian leader can win international acclaim for such a move rather than criticism for his country’s poor human-rights record.