The pragmatic Arab countries are today mainly preoccupied with the rise in power and influence of Islamic fundamentalist movements, primarily the Islamic State (IS) and al-Qaeda. That focus has shifted the governments' attention away from the Palestinian issue. The only exception is Egypt and its leader, President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi.

In his Sept. 28 UN speech, Sisi said the establishment of a Palestinian state on the 1967 borders with Jerusalem as its capital “will effectively eliminate one of the most important factors contributing to the region's instability and one of the most dangerous pretexts used to justify extremism and terrorism.”

Sisi's position is in line with the traditional leading role of Egypt on the Palestinian cause. President Anwar Sadat made dealing with it a condition for the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty in 1979. President Hosni Mubarak played a central role in backing PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat through the Oslo process and hosted most of the negotiations on the Interim Accords of 1995 on Egyptian territory (in Cairo and Taba). Today, Sisi is also preoccupied with Hamas becoming stronger at the expense of Fatah; this has to do with his anti-terror policy.

A senior Egyptian Foreign Ministry official told Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity that ministry officials are contemplating an Egyptian initiative to restart Israeli-Palestinian negotiations on a two-state solution in coordination with the French Foreign Ministry’s initiative. Such an Egyptian policy proposal could include the following four elements: