Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is scheduled to meet Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi in New York tonight. This would be the first public meeting between the two since Sisi became president in 2014.

On Monday evening, Netanyahu met with US President Donald Trump for the first time since his visit to Israel in May.

The meeting comes as Egypt is increasingly involved in efforts to stabilize the situation in Gaza and bring about a Fatah-Hamas reconciliation that would lead to a reassertion of the Palestinian Authority in the Gaza Strip.

The calls between Egypt and Hamas angered Israel.

Netanyahu met with Sisi in January of 2016 in the Aqaba Summit, a secret summit meeting in which Jordanian King Abdullah II and US Secretary of State John Kerry also participated, in order to discuss efforts to try and move ahead with the so-called “peace process” again but the meeting did not result in any progress in the “political process”.

Several months after Sisi met at his palace in Cairo with Netanyahu and with the leader of the opposition Isaac Herzog in another secret meeting in order to examine the possibility of changes in Israel to help speed up the “peace process”. However, the meeting did not bring any result.

Sisi met with a number of Jewish leaders in New York and discussed with them the US efforts to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Reportedly, two participants said that Sisi expressed his optimism concerning the American administration efforts in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and added that Egypt is willing to in provide support in the matter. He added that the best way to push the process is through a regional approach which “involves the Arab countries”

There are talks about a second meeting that brings together Sisi with a wide body of American Jewish leaders. In the previous meeting, which was held during his visit to Washington last May, he said that he supports the conducting a regional peace conference under the supervision  of the new American president.

Source: PNN