Egyptian and Israeli leaders have agreed to “fully co-ordinate” to investigate a deadly shooting at the weekend on their joint border, the Egyptian presidency said in a statement.
It said the two leaders – President Abdel Fattah El Sisi of Egypt and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu – spoke on the telephone on Tuesday, their first direct contact since the Saturday incident in the Sinai Peninsula.
Israel says a police conscript shot three Israeli soldiers and wounded two more in separate shoot-outs on Saturday before he was killed.
Mr Netanyahu described the incident as a terrorist attack and demanded that Egypt fully co-operate with his government in an investigation.
The Egyptian police conscript was buried in a small ceremony after Israeli authorities handed his body to Egypt on Monday.
The family of the conscript, Mohammed Salah Ibrahim, 22, were receiving mourners at their home in the middle-class northern Cairo suburb of Ain Shams on Tuesday.
Egypt said the policeman breached the border barrier pursuing drug smugglers before engaging in a gunfight. Authorities did not directly comment on Mr Netanyahu's claim that it was a terrorist attack, however, Egyptian security officials have been co-operating with their Israeli counterparts in a joint investigation.
“The president and the Israeli Prime Minister emphasised the importance of full co-ordination to uncover the circumstances of the incident,” said the Egyptian presidential statement.
“The two sides are determined to co-ordinate and work together in the context of bilateral relations and to jointly endeavour to achieve comprehensive and fair peace and maintain regional security.”
A 'martyr'
Egyptian social media users have hailed the conscript as a 'hero' with some publishing poems in his honour.
“God, please accept him as a martyr,” wrote a retired Egyptian diplomat on Facebook.
A Facebook post by Mr Ibrahim marking his 20th birthday has been widely shared online since his death. The post had a photo of him in an unbuttoned Hawaiian shirt over a white undervest wearing a medallion and white-framed sunglasses.
“So, here I am starting a new year not knowing how much of my life is behind me and for how long more will I live,” he wrote on June 30, 2021.
Other photos on his Facebook account show him riding a white horse in the desert or posing with the great Giza Pyramids in the background.
“Social media comments (on the border shoot-out) show that most Egyptians can still tell who is their friend and who is their enemy,” wrote columnist Imad Hussein on Monday in Cairo's Al Shorouk.
“(They show) that the peace treaty signed by the late President Anwar Sadat in 1979 is a treaty between two governments and does not oblige the people to love Israelis,” wrote Mr Hussein, who is known to be close to the government.
“The majority of Egyptians, and I cannot say all of them, continue to view Israelis as the enemy and that the struggle with Israel is an existential one.”
Egypt and Israel fought each other in four, full-fledged wars between 1948 and 1973.
The pair now co-operate closely on security and counterterrorism in the vast Sinai Peninsula, where the border is located. Egypt recently quelled an insurgency by militants in Sinai's north-east corner, close to the border with Israel and the Gaza Strip.
The two countries also co-ordinate operations to counter drugs and human trafficking.
Egypt is the main interlocutor between Israel and the Palestinian Hamas group, frequently mediating to end hostilities between them.
Hours before Saturday's shooting, Israeli soldiers foiled an attempted drug smuggling operation at the border, seizing contraband estimated to be worth 1.5 million shekels ($400,000), an Israeli military spokesman said.
The spokesman said no link had been established between the drug seizure and the attack along the border.
In 1979, Egypt became the first Arab state to sign a peace treaty with Israel. The border between the two former foes has been mostly peaceful following the accord, although drug smugglers have occasionally exchanged fire with Israeli troops.
There have been incidents in the past on the border, none of which posed a serious threat to relations.
In 2011, assailants from Sinai killed eight Israelis in an ambush north of Israel's Red Sea port city of Eilat at the northern point of the Gulf of Aqaba. Pursuing Israeli forces killed seven of the attackers and five Egyptian policemen.
In 2012, three militants who infiltrated from Sinai were killed, as well as an Israeli soldier, in a clash along the border. In 2014, two Israeli soldiers on patrol were wounded by unidentified men who fired an anti-tank weapon from Egypt during a drug-smuggling attempt, according to the Israeli military.
In 2015, rockets fired from Sinai hit southern Israel but caused no casualties. ISIS later claimed responsibility.
