Tel Aviv -- Official says unresolved disputes over Gaza, Rafah Crossing and security make summit with Netanyahu unlikely despite interest from Jerusalem, Washington.

with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sissi in New York on September 18, 2017. (HO/AFP)
Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi currently has no plans to meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a government official familiar with the matter told The Times of Israel, amid reports that the Israeli premier is actively seeking such a sit-down.

Egypt has fumed at Israel for a host of issues in recent months that remain unresolved, accordingly decreasing the chances that Sissi will meet Netanyahu any time soon, despite interest in Jerusalem and Washington in making such a summit happen, the official said.

Throughout the Gaza war, sparked by Hamas’s October 7 onslaught, Cairo warned Israel against military operations that would push Palestinians southwards in the Strip toward Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, viewing such a possibility as a red line and a national security threat.

Cairo still fears that Israel hasn’t ruled out the effort amid plans to focus the first reconstruction projects in the southern Gaza city of Rafah, along the Egyptian border, the official said.

Tensions have also flared over the Rafah Crossing. Israel has allowed the crossing to open only for Palestinians exiting Gaza, a policy Egyptian Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty said last week Cairo views as an attempt to thin the enclave’s population — an outcome Egypt has said it will not permit.

Strains deepened further in October, when Israeli Energy Minister Eli Cohen pulled out of a planned signing ceremony for a lucrative natural gas deal with Egypt, arguing the terms were unfair to Israel — a move that angered both Cairo and Washington.

Netanyahu, Israel’s Ambassador to the US Yechiel Leiter, and other Israeli officials have also repeatedly accused Egypt of amassing troops in the Sinai Peninsula, in what Jerusalem claims is a violation of their 1979 peace treaty. Egypt has dismissed the allegations outright.

Netanyahu and Sissi have long shared a strained relationship and have not spoken since before the war.