Egypt replaces intelligence chief who was at heart of hostage talks

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sissi on Wednesday reportedly replaced his trusted intelligence chief who played a key role in talks between Israel and the Palestinian terror group Hamas, in a bid to try to secure a “truce for release” deal. hostages”.

According to an article from Wall Street JournalAbbas Kamel was considered the second most powerful person in Egypt for years, and during his tenure, he built strong relationships with officials in U.S. and Israeli intelligence agencies, as well as leaders of Hamas.

Kamel will now be special advisor to Sissi and coordinator of security services, but the WSJ notes that it is unclear whether this is a promotion or demotion, given the continued failure to reach a new deal between Israel and the Palestinian terror group Hamas since the month of November.

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It is also unclear whether he will continue to participate in further negotiations.

The November deal, negotiated jointly by Kamel, CIA Director William Burns and Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani, ensured that 105 of the 251 hostages – taken by Hamas during its October 7 pogrom, during which he also murdered more than 1,200 people – were exchanged during a week-long truce for Palestinian prisoners.

In exchange for the hostages, fighting was halted in Gaza for each day that women, children and non-Israeli hostages were freed, while Israel released Palestinian women and minors incarcerated for security breaches in Israel.

Since then, attempts to negotiate a deal to release hostages still held by Hamas have repeatedly failed, with Israel and the Palestinian terror group accusing each other of sabotaging the talks – a fact disputed by the administration. of American President Joe Biden, on several occasions.

However, despite these failures, and whether Kamel’s reassignment was a promotion or a negotiation, the director of the International Crisis Group’s US program, Michael Wahid Hanna, told the WSJ that Kamel “is and remains one of the few people in the system in whom the president trusts.”

“I don’t expect it to disappear from circulation,” he added.

Kamel was replaced by his deputy, Hassan Rashad, who, according to the WSJoversaw key issues in Egypt’s intelligence services, including the country’s relations with Iran, which have at times been strained over the years.

His appointment was announced shortly before Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi arrived in Cairo for the first official visit by an Iranian Foreign Minister in almost twelve years.

Egypt is the seventh stop on a Middle East tour during which Araghchi spoke with officials from Lebanon, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Iraq and Oman over regional tensions linked to the war in Gaza and the ground operation carried out by the Israeli army against the Lebanese Shiite terrorist group Hezbollah.

He is expected to travel to Türkiye after his visit to Egypt, the Iranian Foreign Ministry said.

Araghchi’s trip also comes as Iran awaits an Israeli response to its October 1 ballistic missile attack, which it said it launched in retaliation for the killing of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and that of of Hamas’s political branch Ismaïl Haniyeh in Tehran in July, for which Israel has not claimed responsibility.

Iran launched some 200 missiles at Israel in that attack, killing one Palestinian in the West Bank and causing minor damage across the country. The IDF also said a few bases were hit, but none of the military capabilities were compromised.

Tensions have continued to rise in the region since the pogrom perpetrated by the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas on October 7, 2023 in southern Israel, which sparked the war in Gaza.

In response to this pogrom, the deadliest in the country’s history and the worst carried out against Jews since the Holocaust, Israel, which vowed to annihilate Hamas and free the hostages, launched an air operation followed by a ground incursion into the Gaza Strip, which began on October 27.

More than 42,000 people have died in Gaza since the start of the war, according to the Hamas Ministry of Health. The figures released by the terrorist group are unverifiable, and they reportedly include its own terrorists, killed in Israel and Gaza, and civilians killed by the hundreds of rockets fired by the terrorist groups that fall inside the Gaza Strip.

Israel says it has killed 17,000 terrorists in combat. The IDF also claims to have killed a thousand terrorists inside the country on October 7.

The army claims to have taken “numerous measures” to minimize harm to civilians and stresses that the terrorist group systematically violates international law and brutally exploits civilian institutions and the population as human shields for its terrorist activities, fighting for civilian areas, including homes, hospitals, schools and mosques.

To date, 355 Israeli soldiers have been killed since the start of the ground incursion into Gaza against Hamas and during operations along the Gaza border.

Israel has also faced near-daily rocket and drone attacks from Hezbollah in the north, with the Lebanese Shiite terror group saying it is doing so to support Gaza in the war against the Palestinian terror group Hamas. is taking place there, as well as drone and missile attacks by Iranian-backed groups in Yemen and Iraq.

Hezbollah attacks peaked when Israel intensified its response last month with a series of heavy airstrikes targeting the Lebanese Shiite terrorist group in southern Lebanon and Beirut, during which the vast majority of its leaders, including Nasrallah, were eliminated. Israel also launched a ground operation in southern Lebanon to dismantle Hezbollah infrastructure near the border.

So far, border clashes have caused the deaths of twenty-eight civilians on the Israeli side, as well as thirty-eight Israeli army soldiers and reservists.

Separately, Israel has eliminated at least 966 Hezbollah terrorists over the past year, but the figure is likely higher because the Lebanese Shiite terrorist group has not regularly updated its toll since the start of the war. Israeli ground operation launched on September 23.