Haisam Hassanein was an Associate Fellow at The Washington Institute. Previously, he was the Institute's 2016-2017 Glazer Fellow, in which he focused on economic relations between Israel and Arab states. He has published in several media outlets, including the Wall Street Journal, Foreign Affairs
Articles & Testimony
By keeping bilateral military operations a secret, the two governments risk perpetuating fundamental misconceptions among Egypt's military ranks.
Cooperation between Israel and Egypt has increased to a high level in recent years, evidenced by recent reports on military coordination in Sinai. Yet this somewhat secret alliance has not been easy for some Egyptian generals to reconcile, given their predilection for conditioning the public to believe that Israel is Enemy No. 1 in order to gain legitimacy and maintain control. Their uneasiness stems from the inability to define the relationship with Israel since the two nations signed a peace treaty in 1979. As a result, three schools of thoughts have emerged within the military establishment over the past four decades...