Israel Regime Orchestrated Morsi’s Overthrow in Egypt: General

Morsi, a member of the Muslim Brotherhood party, entered office after the 2011 Egyptian uprising against the regime of former dictator Hosni Mubarak.

Brigadier General Aryeh Eldad wrote in an article in Maariv newspaper that Israeli spies had reason to believe that Morsi “intended to cancel the peace agreement with Israel and send more Egyptian military forces to the Sinai Peninsula.”

In 1978, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin signed the Camp David peace agreement that, among other things, required Israel to withdraw all forces from the Sinai Peninsula while limiting the number of forces Cairo could deploy to the region.

According to Eldad, when Israeli officials found out about Morsi’s alleged plans, they made it a priority to overthrow the Egyptian president and replace him with the current president, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, who served as Morsi’s defense minister before the coup.

“At that stage, Israel was quick and willing to activate its diplomatic tools, and perhaps even greater means, to bring Abdel Fattah el-Sisi to power in Egypt, and convince the then US administration under President Barack Obama not to oppose this move,” wrote the Israeli general.

Sisi came to power in 2014, a year after leading the successful military coup against Morsi. Today he enjoys overwhelming support in the Egyptian parliament, which voted earlier this year in favor of constitutional changes that could potentially extend his presidency until 2034.

Morsi, 68, has been serving a 20-year prison term on charges of ordering the arrest and torture of protesters, a 25-year jail term on charges of passing intelligence to Qatar and a three-year term for insulting the judiciary.