It was a small item in the world media reports, but it was a report with huge future ramifications. The first link offers a brief report that Egypt has signed a preliminary agreement to begin importing Israeli natural gas. As a previous post noted, the Israelis have made a very large discovery of natural gas off their Mediterranean coast and the Israelis will become an energy exporter in future years. Egypt has a need for energy imports and having an energy supplier so close is very much in Egypt’s national interests.
The fact that this can occur at all is a testimony to how rapidly alliances and national relationships are shifting in the Mideast. As readers surely realize, the Egyptian army had to intervene to save Egypt from national chaos and disintegration by deposing a radical Muslim Brotherhood leader, Muhammad Morsi–who is still in custody. Radical Jihadis have reacted with anger and violence toward Egypt’s government, army and police forces. The second link documents a fairly recent Jihadi attack against Egyptian troops and, with each such attack, the attitude of the Egyptian government against Islamic Jihadis and radicals hardens. There have also been reports that since the overthrow and outlawing of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, Egypt has worked closely with Israel to stop the smuggling of rockets, military supplies, etc. from Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula into Gaza via an elaborate tunnel system. A previous post cited a report that the militaries of Israel and Egypt were working now working very closely together after Morsi was deposed.
As this post is being written [July 17, 2014], the Israeli military has begun a ground invasion of the Gaza strip in southern, northern and central regions. It was launched after Hamas rejected an Egyptian proposal for a cease-fire which the Israelis accepted (third link). Hamas also attempted a major terrorist act against Israel which was thwarted. Hamas reportedly sent 13 terrorists via a tunnel into Israel to massacre Israeli civilians, but the alert IDF stopped their attack. It is also remarkable that Hamas is not receiving the reflexive verbal support that used to issue from Islamic nations in any such confrontation with Israel. The last link reports on the remarkable phenomenon of a muted Arab/Islamic response in other nations to the conflict between Hamas and Israel. After seeing the horrors that have been unleashed by the ISIL Islamic Jihadi army in Syria and Iraq and the disastrous reign of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, it seems evident that Arab Muslim nations now see Islamic Jihadi movements like Hamas as a far greater threat than Israel. The third link also raises the possibility that the Israeli military may stay in Gaza for some time to destroy Hamas’ network of tunnels used for storing and moving rockets and missiles around to launch sites to fire them at Israel. According to the third link, the Israelis “are taking over various areas of Gaza.” It seems Israel is determined to end the threat of Hamas rockets for good if it is possible to do so.
The energy deal between Egypt and Israel can only serve to link these nations together in a friendly relationship, if not an eventual alliance. It is the same economic dynamic that is uniting the Kurds and Turks, historic enemies who have found that they can make money together by transporting Kurdish oil via Turkish pipelines to European customers as the Kurds and Turks bypass the Shiite central government of Iraq in these energy deals. The Mideast map is being re-drawn as nations are forging new alliances and relationships as the USA withdraws from its historic position of global superpower. These reformed alliances will surely fall into place as God fulfills his prophecies about the alliances that will be in the eventual Gog-Magog war at the end of our age. The pivotal prophecy in Ezekiel 38:2-6 does not include any of the modern nations descended from Abraham (Israelites, Jews, Arabs, Turks, etc.) as being part of the Gog-Magog alliance and Egypt is not listed there either. Their omission from the rogue’s gallery of the nations prophesied to be in the Gog-Magog alliance is good news.
- http://www.worldtribune.com/2014/06/30/egypt-set-import-israeli-gas-ease-fuel-shortage/
- http://www.worldtribune.com/2014/06/29/egyptian-soldiers-civilian-clothes-killed-sinai-insurgents/
- http://www.jpost.com/Operation-Protective-Edge/IDF-intensifies-Gaza-attacks-with-artillery-fire-air-strikes-363289
- http://www.clarionproject.org/analysis/arab-world-holds-hamas-responsible-latest-conflict
