Gaza Tension Stoked by Unlikely Alliance Between Israel and Egypt Strategy of Squeezing Hamas Was Effective, but Helped Lead to Open Warfare, Officials Believe By Adam Entous in Jerusalem and Nicholas Casey in Gaza Aug. 6, 2014 10:38 p.m. ET The plan was simple: Israel and the new military-led government in Egypt would work together to ratchet up pressure on their shared enemy in the Gaza Strip - Hamas. But their miscalculations triggered a crisis. WSJ's Adam Entous joins the News Hub to discuss. Photo: Getty Israel and Egypt quietly agreed to work in concert to squeeze Hamas after Egypt's military coup in 2013, a strategy that proved effective but which some Israeli and U.S. officials now believe stoked tensions that helped spur open warfare in Gaza.  When former military chief Abdel Fattah Al Sisi rose to power in Egypt after leading the overthrow of Islamist President Mohammed Morsi, Israel found the two countries had a common interest in suppressing the Islamist group that ruled Gaza. They worked to bring pressure on their shared enemy.Mr. Sisi followed Israel's lobbying effort closely and was appreciative, the Israeli official said. "It came at a very formative time for him" and helped cement a trusting relationship between friends who realized they were vital to each others' national security, he said. Cooperation with Israel is highly sensitive in Egypt and Egyptian officials declined to discuss in detail the partnership between the neighbors against Hamas. In Gaza, there was shock at the events unfolding in Cairo.  A senior Israeli official said the two governments wanted to advance their shared interests and increase pressure on Hamas. But he insisted there was no master plan to squeeze it to the point that "something would explode."Yet when Mr. Sisi closed nearly all of the tunnels along Egypt's border with Gaza but didn't compensate for the loss of those avenues by allowing the passage above ground of needed supplies, some Israeli officials said they privately began to raise alarm bells about the severity of Cairo's decisions. "They actually were suffocating Gaza too much," one Israeli official said. In Gaza, the situation grew desperate. At the height of Hamas's distress, three Israeli teenagers were kidnapped in the West Bank in June and subsequently found dead. Israel quickly concluded that Hamas was responsible and rounded up its activists in the West Bank, infuriating the group's armed wing in Gaza. After the abduction, which U.S. officials believe was carried out by Hamas members without the approval of their leaders in Gaza, Israeli intelligence officials warned policy makers that "overly pressuring Hamas will lead to a conflagration," according to another senior Israeli official. Rocket fire from Gaza escalated, and Israel began to respond with airstrikes. U.S. officials, who tried to intervene in the initial days after the conflict broke out on July 8 to try to find a negotiated solution, soon realized that Mr. Netanyahu's office wanted to run the show with Egypt and to keep the Americans at a distance, according to U.S., European and Israeli officials. Reflecting Egypt's importance, Mr. Gilad and other officials took Mr. Sisi's "temperature" every day during the war to make sure he was comfortable with the military operation as it intensified. Israeli officials knew television pictures of dead Palestinians would at some point bring Cairo to urge Israel to stop. "We knew we could not do something that went beyond what they could digest," a senior Israeli official said of the Egyptians. Egypt's view mattered more than America's, Israeli officials said. When a tentative deal finally came together in Cairo to stop the fighting, Washington found itself outside looking in on the Israeli-Egyptian partnership once again. Egypt and Israel working together is not a surprise to Bible Students as it is fully expected based on Bible Prophecy. According to Bible Prophecy the Biblical King of the South will see an alignment between Egypt with Israel along with the Arab Gulf States. Despite how things looked in Egypt just a year ago, Egypt is now back on track with Israel and according to Bible Prophecy will remain so. The King of the South will oppose aggression from Russia and the EU. They will be supported by America and Britain. This News Item shows that the Nations are continuing to align themselves according to Bible Prophecy. Yet again we see the latter day alignment of Nations as Prophesied by the Bible falling into place before our very eyes. See this article to learn more about this and the latter day prophecies of the Bible. | 
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