Former Israeli intelligence officer: Sisi's life will end by means of assassination

Israeli elites and commentators have said that the Al-Sisi regime is tumbling. They have also warned that enormous dangers await Israel once this regime is gone.

Former Israeli intelligence officer Dr Ephraim Harari has predicted not only that the current regime will fall but that Sisi’s life will come to an end by means of an assassination, just as public prosecutor Hisham Barakat and former president Anwar Al-Sadat were assassinated.

In a column published in Yisrael Hayoum newspaper in its Sunday edition, Harari explained that Israel’s anxiety regarding the repercussions of the fall of Sisi are well placed and justified.

He explained that Sisi’s resounding failure to confront jihadists in Sinai has been aggravated by the growing economic and political crises in the country.

Harari stressed that Sisi’s economic failures have surpassed the most pessimistic predictions, noting that the rise in unemployment rates among the youth and the fact that aid coming from Gulf states is the only factor that “keeps the head of the state floating above water before drowning”.

Harari also said that 400 protest rallies were organised to express demands due to the decline in labourers’ conditions and the unprecedented fall in the levels of income.

He stressed that Sisi has rapidly lost his popular support because he clashed with the Islamic inclinations of the Egyptian people. He noted that the overwhelming majority of Egyptians, contrary to a prevalent misconception, adopt Islam and reject the “religious revolution” for which Sisi has been calling.

Harari explained that according to recent studies 75 per cent of Egyptians support the implementation of Shari’ah law.

He also stressed that all signs indicate that Sisi’s war against the Muslim Brotherhood has failed, in spite of killing and wounded thousands and detaining about 40,000 – let alone the fact that the judiciary issued death sentences against a large number of Muslim Brotherhood leaders. In addition, thousands of mosques where the group had influence have been shut down.

Harari also explained that Sisi has tried to dry up the sources of religious discourse that urges jihad, noting that he put pressure orators and clerics not to rely on religious edicts (fatwas) attributed to scholars known to encourage jihad. He also demanded that Cairo’s Al-Azhar Univeristy refrain from promoting the idea that Islam should prevail worldwide.

Within the same context, Israel’s Yedeot Aharanot newspaper warned against the eruption of a revolution against Sisi following his failure in the war against the Islamists.

In an analysis published on Saturday evening, the newspaper said that the Egyptian people are beginning to discover the signs of Sisi’s failure to provide them with security and that the image of the “strong leader”, which he tried to construct for himself, is vanishing rapidly.

The newspaper pointed out that Israel relies on securing its regional and strategic environment through the cooperation offered by the Sisi regime and that his disappearance would leave a vacuum from which Israel will suffer for a long time.

At the same time, Israeli military commentators have sharply criticised the performance of Sisi’s army and his security and intelligence services.

Most commentators who discussed the recent attacks in Sinai wondered about the Egyptian intelligence failure to thwart the operations. They noted that Sinai Province, a self-professed ISIS affiliate militant group, must have made considerable preparations before carrying out the raids, which would mean that it should have been possible to monitor these preparations and thwart the killings.

Asaf Jibour, a commentator in Micor Rishon newspaper, published an analysis last Friday in which he noted that the failure of Sisi and his army was resounding and will reinforce the motivation of groups such as Sinai Province to carry out more operations.

Translated from Arabi21

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