J. Post/French journalist: Hezbollah asked us to avoid saying Israel killed its military chief /Sisi: There is trust and confidence between me and the Israelis

French journalist: Hezbollah asked us to avoid saying Israel killed its military chief
Jerusalem Post/May 17/16

Hezbollah asked western journalists not to report that Israel was behind the assassination of Mustafa Badreddine, Hezbollah’s military chief, a prominent French journalist has alleged. Georges Malbrunot, the Middle East reporter for the French daily newspaper Le Figaro, wrote a series of comments on his Twitter page on Saturday, regarding the assassination of Hezbollah’s top commander. “Hezbollah asked the journalists who asked for its reaction to Baddredine’s liquidation to avoid saying that Israel is involved in the attack,” Malbrunot wrote. “On Friday, I spoke with a diplomat in the Levant who told me that the anti-Assad Syrian armed groups do not have the ability to produce such a sophisticated operation even if Israel could resort to use the services of one of these groups,” the French reporter added. According to Malbrunot, the foreign diplomat told him that “It could be little doubt that the assassination of Badreddine is the continuation of the Israeli liquidations of Hezbollah’s senior leaders.” A statement released by Hezbollah on Friday emphasized that Badreddine was assassinated on Thursday night near Damascus airport by an artillery shell fired by a Syrian rebel group. Although Hezbollah did not publicly accuse Israel of his assassination, during the burial ceremony of Baddreddine on Friday, senior leaders in the organization voiced anti-Israel statements, naming the Syrian “heretic” rebel groups as the “spearhead of the American-Zionist project in the Middle East.”The Iranian news agency Fars reported on Monday that General Qassem Suleimani, the head of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards’ Quds Force, payed a condolence visit to Baddredinne’s family in Beirut on Sunday, following which he visited Baddreddine’s grave.

Egypt’s Sisi: ‘There is trust and confidence between me and the Israelis’
Maayan Groisman/Gerusalem Post/May 17/16
Amid growing opposition in Egyptian society to relations with Israel, manifested in a new BDS campaign launched in Cairo this week, Egypt’s President Abdel Fatah al-Sisi has lauded the peace treaty with Israel, claiming that it “wrote a bright chapter in the region’s history.”Delivering a speech at the inauguration of a new power plant in the city of Asyut Tuesday, Sisi said: “When I meet American Congress members and delegations of Jewish communities, I always tell them that the step that was taken more than 40 years ago is the one that brought real peace and wrote a bright chapter of peace between people in our region’s history.””After signing the peace accords, no one thought that true and lasting peace, as it exists today between Israel and Egypt, could be achieved. However, it became a permanent peace due to the changing times and reality,” Sisi stated. The Egyptian president dedicated most of his speech to the efforts to reinvigorate the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. Sisi said that “there is an opportunity to write a new chapter of peace in the area,” calling on both the Israeli and Palestinian leaderships to take advantage of this opportunity. “If we can all join forces in order to solve the Palestinian issue by creating hope for Palestinians and assuring security for Israelis, we will be able to write a new chapter that may prove to be more important than the peace accords between Israel and Egypt,” Sisi added. In light of the ongoing tensions between Hamas and Fatah, Egypt’s president urged the Palestinian factions to unify their ranks, suggesting Egyptian mediation in reconciliation talks. To signal the dire need to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Sisi asked the Israeli leadership to allow his speech to be broadcast in Israel. The Egyptian president concluded his speech by affirming that “there is trust and confidence between me and the Israelis.”
Sisi’s comments appear to be a last attempt to revitalize the Israeli-Palestinian peace process after France announced on Tuesday that the regional peace conference that was supposed to take place this month will be postponed to enable the American administration to attend it.