Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid will visit Egypt on Thursday for talks with Egyptian leaders about a prisoner exchange with militant Palestinian group Hamas.
This strengthens the Israel-Hamas truce that ended their latest war and boosts reconstruction efforts in the Gaza Strip.
The visit, confirmed by the two countries’ foreign ministries, is the latest evidence of closer ties being forged between Egypt and Israel, more than 40 years after the neighbours signed a peace treaty.
The visit by Mr Lapid, which is expected to last a few hours, follows talks between Egyptian leaders and Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett at the Red Sea resort of Sharm El Sheikh in September.
Mr Bennett was first Israeli leader to make a public visit to Egypt in a decade.
Mr Lapid was scheduled to meet his Egyptian counterpart, Sameh Shukry, and possibly President Abdel Fattah El Sisi.
According to Israeli media reports, Hamas is holding two Israeli civilians – Avner Mengistu and Hisham Al Sayed. It also has the bodies of two Israeli soldiers – Oron Shaul and Hadar Goldin – who were killed in the 2014 war.
Hamas wants Israel to release more than 1,100 prisoners in exchange. Israel, according to Egyptian security officials, wants to release the Palestinian prisoners in batches, starting with older inmates, women and minors.
Hamas leaders have been indirectly negotiating the deal with Israel, with officials from Egypt’s General Directorate of Intelligence, the country’s top spy agency, acting as the go-between.
Egyptian intelligence officials have traditionally taken the lead in dealing with Israel and the Palestinians.
Israel does not directly negotiate with Hamas, which it considers a terrorist group.
Egypt, which has borders with Gaza and Israel, mediated a truce in May that ended an 11-day war between the two sides in which at least 250 Palestinians were killed in hundreds of Israeli air strikes on Gaza. Rockets fired by militants in Gaza killed 13 people in Israel.
The Egyptians have since been keen to pave the way for a resumption of Palestinian-Israeli negotiations, which collapsed seven years ago.
Their top priority is to strengthen the truce between Hamas and Israel and reconcile Palestinian factions as a precursor to Gaza reconstruction, possible Palestinian elections and a resumption of peace talks.
Hamas and the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority have been at odds since the militant group seized Gaza in 2007 from the PA, which exercises limited self-rule in the West Bank.
Egypt has traditionally played a mediating role in the Arab-Israeli conflict alongside the US. Its role has been made possible, and credible, by its own US-sponsored 1979 peace treaty with Israel.
The National News.