White House said to be pushing for summit between Netanyahu and Egypt’s Sissi

The White House is reportedly looking to broker a summit between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, hoping to push the two countries together through shared economic interests.

According to a report in the Axios news site on Sunday, the Trump administration is nudging Israel to forge deals with a number of countries in the region, including Syria, Lebanon, and Saudi Arabia, and sees improving ties with Egypt as an achievable place to start.

While Israel and Egypt officially have diplomatic relations — and Cairo played a key role in mediating the Gaza ceasefire — relations between the two leaders are frosty. Sissi had avoided speaking to Netanyahu throughout the Gaza conflict, and the two have not met in public since 2017.

In the immediate wake of the Gaza ceasefire deal reached in October, Netanyahu was invited by US President Donald Trump to join him at a summit in Sharm el-Sheikh but turned down the last-minute invitation, citing the Simhat Torah holiday.

According to Axios, citing an Israeli source, Netanyahu’s “reversal went over badly with Sissi.”

The report noted that Jared Kushner, Trump’s adviser and son-in-law and a longtime friend of Netanyahu, has been pushing Israel to offer economic incentives to potential allies rather than just talking “about Iran all the time.”

“Jared told Bibi that Israel needs to develop economic diplomacy muscle and get the private sector involved in the peace process. He explained how when the Qataris, Saudis, or Emiratis come to Washington, they bring business delegations because they are focused on deals,” a US official told the Axios news site.

In order to entice Sissi to attend such a meeting, Israel will need to make a range of concessions to Egypt, including signing a strategic gas deal between the countries, the report said.

“This is a huge opportunity for Israel. Selling gas to Egypt will create interdependence, get the countries closer together, create a warmer peace, and prevent war,” a US official told the news site.

In October, US Energy Secretary Chris Wright canceled an upcoming visit to Israel at the last minute, after Energy Minister Eli Cohen refused to sign off on a massive gas export agreement recently agreed upon between Jerusalem and Cairo.

In August, Israel’s Leviathan field had signed a $35 billion deal to export natural gas to Egypt, the largest export agreement in Israel’s history. But Cohen’s office said in October that he would not approve the deal until “fair prices are agreed upon for the Israeli market,” adding that the Trump administration applied significant pressure on Israel to approve the deal.

An Israeli source told Axios that “Israeli domestic petty politics” is holding up the finalization of the deal, and that Netanyahu wants to sign the deal in a public meeting with Sissi in Egypt.

The source added that Netanyahu has put together a team that is looking at building a package of incentives to offer Sissi before such a summit.

The US is hoping that a warm meeting between the Israeli and Egyptian leaders can kick off rapprochement talks with other regional powers, building on Trump’s 20-point peace plan to end the war in Gaza.

“What we told Bibi is that he needs to turn it into a warm peace and then work together to de-escalate things in the region. If it works with Egypt, we can then do the same thing with Syria, Lebanon, and Saudi Arabia,” the US official said.

Pushed by the US, Israeli and Lebanese officials held a historic meeting last week in Naqoura, Lebanon, which Netanyahu’s office characterized as “an initial attempt to create a basis for a relationship and economic cooperation between Israel and Lebanon.”

The White House has also been pushing for Israel to reach some sort of deal with Syria’s new leadership and to restart stalled normalization talks with Saudi Arabia, though major obstacles stand in the way of both efforts.