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Egypt has great interest in preserving Hamas capabilities, warns Israeli intelligence officer 

February 4, 2025 at 9:20 am

Al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas, in Gaza City, Gaza on February 01, 2025. [Dawoud Abo Alkas – Anadolu Agency]

A senior Israeli intelligence officer has warned the Egypt has “a great interest” in preserving the capabilities of Hamas in the Gaza Strip. The former head of the military field research branch in the research department of Israeli military intelligence, Elie Dekel, made his comment during an interview on Israel’s 103 FM radio station.

“This is why we must occupy an area of three kilometres north of Rafah in Gaza to prevent the continued supply of weapons and other supplies from Egypt to the Strip, and to prevent confrontations with the Egyptians in the future,” said Dekel.

He stressed that Egypt has been keen to exhaust Israel’s power since 1956. “They made us drink the blood of all sorts of organisations that they established, like Fatah, and all the things they did between the wars to drain us, while washing their hands of the truth,” claimed Dekel. “Since we have a peace agreement, and there are also American interests, there is a great interest in weakening our strength, and Egypt does not care about this. If Egypt had the slightest interest in turning Gaza into Singapore, it should have connected Gaza to the vast electricity grid in Sinai, as Sinai exports electricity to Jordan, thus preventing the Gazans from needing energy. If Egypt wanted to solve the Palestinian problem, it could have done so during the period in which it controlled Gaza.”

When asked whether Egypt was interested in war with Israel, the intelligence expert replied firmly, “I think so.”

He claimed to have been the person who discovered the 60 tunnels in Sinai to connect Egypt to the peninsula and speed up the movement of its forces there, among other things. “It’s not just 60 tunnels. Last year, after all the stories about the wonderful relations between [Israel] and the Egyptians, Egypt began digging huge tunnels, with an entrance diameter of 7 metres and possibly tens of metres in length. Unfortunately, I don’t know all the tunnels in Sinai, the tunnels in the sides of the mountains, in order to preserve the strategic weapons, there,” he added.

“These are strategic tunnels for storing weapons that they began digging in Sinai last year, after they had already dug about 60 tunnels of this type on the western bank of the Suez Canal.” he pointed out.

“We are the enemy,” Dekel asserted, “and I don’t know why Egypt is arming itself, digging strategic tunnels, or investing huge amounts of capital in crossings, gates, ammunition and fuel other than to use against us. I don’t think they are digging 60 tunnels in Sinai against Iran, for example. They are preparing an offensive weapon, and they are working to protect it from being attacked by our aircraft.”

In response to his statements, the two presenters asked whether the tunnels and the measures taken by the Egyptians do not conflict with the peace agreement with Israel, to which Dekel replied, “There is not a single line of the peace agreement that has not been violated.”

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