Visiting Egypt, Israelis thrilled by warm welcome

The public address system at Ben Gurion International Airport called on the last passengers of Air Sinai flight 4D 55 to present themselves at the exit gate. Flight attendants wearing Egypt Air uniforms greeted boarding passengers. The website of Egypt’s national airline makes no mention of Tel Aviv. Air Sinai, its subsidiary for the Cairo-Tel Aviv route only, does not have a website at all.

This unique arrangement, which is part of the Israel-Egypt peace treaty, distills the essence of the relationship between Israel and Egypt as they mark the 40th anniversary of their March 1979 peace treaty. While they have reciprocal embassies, their leaders do not visit each other. While the Egyptian elites boycott the Israelis, the people welcome them warmly.

Slightly over an hour after takeoff from Israel, a guide led a group of 26 Israelis toward the passenger terminal at Cairo International Airport. In the line for passport control, a silver-haired man from the group told Al-Monitor that his children had urged him to forego the “dangerous trip” to an Arab country. Another woman from the group said that when friends heard she was traveling to Egypt, they told her she was “insane.” Meanwhile, police officers glanced quickly at the visas stamped in the visitors' passports by the Egyptian Embassy in Tel Aviv, and sent them on their way — quicker than the border control procedures at New York’s airports.

Israeli travel agencies can barely keep up with the demand for tours to Egypt. Eight years after the 2011 revolution that drove tourists away from the pyramids and the Pharaonic temples of southern Egypt, Israelis are storming their southern neighbor. “Usually this is the first Arab country most of them have visited,” veteran tour guide David Negev of the Ayala tour agency told Al-Monitor. “They arrive with some trepidation and go back home as envoys of peace,” said Negev, who has made the trip 70 times.