The U.S. ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, is expected to travel to Cairo for talks with senior Egyptian officials, a spokesman for the U.S. embassy in Jerusalem said, at a moment of increasingly fraught relations between Israel and Egypt.
The talks, set to occur in the coming days, will focus on the Gaza war, according to three U.S. and Middle Eastern officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to share sensitive details about the visit.
It would likely be the first official visit to Egypt in decades by a sitting U.S. ambassador to Israel, and is expected to include a meeting with Egypt’s foreign minister, Badr Abdelatty, according to the three officials.
It is not yet clear what role the current U.S. ambassador to Egypt, Herro Mustafa Garg, who was appointed during the Biden administration, will play in the talks.
The Egyptian Ministry of Foreign Affairs did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Mr. Huckabee’s visit comes amid strained relations between Israel and Egypt, largely over the war in Gaza, which borders both nations.
Egypt has criticized Israel’s ground assault on Gaza City, where nearly one million Palestinians were sheltering until recently, fearing that the fighting could force hundreds of thousands of Gazans across the Egyptian border into the Sinai Peninsual.
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