Egypt-Israeli Cooperation: At the Top Only

Posted: December 27th, 2016

By Michele Dunne

Michele Dunne is the director and a senior fellow in Carnegie's Middle East Program, where her research focuses on political and economic change in Arab countries, particularly Egypt, as well as U.S. policy in the Middle East. She was the founding director of the Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East at the Atlantic Council from 2011 to 2013 and was a senior associate and editor of the Arab Reform Bulletin at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace from 2006 to 2011. Dunne was a Middle East specialist at the U.S. Department of State from 1986 to 2003, where she served in assignments that included the National Security Council, the Secretary's Policy Planning Staff, the U.S. embassy in Cairo, the U.S. consulate general in Jerusalem, and the Bureau of Intelligence and Research. She also served as a visiting professor of Arabic language and Arab studies at Georgetown from 2003 to 2006.

In a surprising move last week, Egypt postponed a UN Security Council vote on a resolution it had proposed demanding an end to Israeli settlement building in the West Bank. Although the resolution eventually passed, the event provided another of example of the increasingly close cooperation between Egypt and Israel. The Cipher Brief sat down with Michele Dunne, Director of the Middle East Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, to discuss the current state of relations between Egypt and Israel.

The Cipher Brief: How has the Egypt-Israel relationship evolved since Abdel Fattah El-Sisi became Egypt’s President in 2013?

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