By Joel Leyden
Israel News Agency
Jerusalem, Israel — July 12, 2019 … Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his wife Sara were hosted this week at the residence of Egyptian Ambassador Khaled Azmi, in honor of celebrations for Egypt’s National Day.
Following is an excerpt of Prime Minister Netanyahu’s remarks:
“We’re celebrating 40 years of peace between Israel and Egypt. On the 40th year of our peace, we hope to achieve many other things between us and in our region. We have to understand the historic achievement of having this peace approach now the fifth decade. It has had to weather some storms. It is weathering storms now.
I don’t mean between us, I mean a storm that is ravishing our region right now and seeks to impose on us an unforgiving, violent creed.
And we both – Egypt and Israel and many others in the region — are fighting this extremism, this violence and this terrorism.
I want to commend my friend and colleague, President A-Sisi, for standing strong against this tide of extremism and terrorism, and I want to say that it’s not obvious that it is possible in the face of so much and so many assaults to stand firm, but President A-Sisi and Egypt have stood firm, as has our peace. Our peace is the cornerstone, exactly as you said, of peace and stability in the region. We cannot imagine what our region would be without this peace.
In my meetings with President A-Sisi, I’ve been impressed, not only by his leadership, but also by his wisdom. He has given me a lot of insights about the nature of the challenge that we face. We have discussed together how we can meet those challenges in the best ways possible.
We cooperate in many areas that can increase the economic well-being of our two nations. There is now I think Israeli gas flowing into Egypt, an experimental effort. In four months, there’ll be more. We’re talking about something that could work not only both ways, but in many ways, including other countries in the region.
We have commitments to security, prosperity and peace, and we’d like to see a broader peace.
We are all expecting to see what President Trump will put forward. Everyone should have an open heart and an open mind to consider the specific proposals when they’re put forward.”