Netanyahu, Sisi hold talks in New York

NEW YORK - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi met in New York on Wednesday to discuss Gaza and reviving peace talks with the Palestinians, officials said.

During the meeting, which lasted nearly two hours and took place on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly, the two "discussed regional developments and the situation in Gaza", a statement from Netanyahu's office said.

Netanyahu and Sisi met in public for the first time in 2017 and Israeli media reports last month said that they had held a secret summit in Egypt in May to discuss a truce in Gaza, which is under tight Israeli and Egyptian border restrictions.

In recent months, mass protests along Gaza's border with Israel have triggered repeated deadly clashes with the army, prompting warnings of the risk of a new conflict.

On Tuesday, the World Bank warned that the Gaza Strip's economy is in "free fall" as cuts to aid and salaries add to an already crippling Israeli blockade on the Hamas-run enclave.

Gaza lies between Israel and Egypt, which along with the UN has been seeking to broker a long-term truce between Israel and Hamas, but those efforts have stalled in recent weeks.

Netanyahu and Sisi also discussed "ways to revive the peace process" between Israel and the Palestinians, a statement from the Egyptian president's office said.

Sisi told Netanyahu that "a final and just settlement to the Palestinian issue would contribute to providing a new situation in the Middle East," the statement said.

Both Netanyahu and Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas are due to address the UN General Assembly later on Thursday, a day after US President Donald Trump met the Israeli premier and pledged to present a "very fair" Middle East peace plan by the end of the year.

Trump also said explicitly for the first time that he backed a two-state solution to the conflict, a comment that failed to impress either side.

The Palestinians said it flew in the face of his administration's actions over the past year, while Netanyahu told Israeli journalists he would never relinquish security control over the West Bank.

Later on Wednesday Trump told a news conference that he would be open to a one-state solution if that was the preference of the parties themselves, a position he had previously stated.

Netanyahu, a right-wing politician who rarely utters publicly the words "Palestinian state" - a concept he conditionally endorsed in 2009 but which far-right coalition partners oppose - said he was not caught by surprise by Trump's initial remarks.

In a statement, Netanyahu said he was confident that a promised US peace plan would back Israel's demand to maintain security control of the West Bank; territory it occupied in a 1967 war and which Palestinians seek as part of a future state.

Palestinians are boycotting Washington's peace efforts after Trump broke with long-standing US policy by recognising Jerusalem as Israel's capital and moved the American Embassy to the contested city.

Palestinian leaders say that a state, with East Jerusalem as its capital, must be based on the pre-1967 war borders and see any future Israeli military presence as a violation of sovereignty.

Egypt is also mediating reconciliation talks between Hamas and Abbas's secular Fatah movement a decade after a bloody split.

Egypt was the first of a handful of Arab countries to recognise Israel under a 1979 peace treaty and the two countries maintain close co-ordination on security as well as energy ties. Netanyahu and Sisi have met on several occasions since the Egyptian leader came to power.

On Thursday Israeli and Egyptian companies announced that they would buy into a pipeline that would enable a landmark $15 billion natural gas export deal to begin next year.

First gas imports

A US-Israeli consortium leading the development of Israel's offshore gas reserves announced the deal that would enable the export of natural gas to Egypt.

Noble Energy and its Israeli partner Delek, along with Egyptian East Gas Company, bought 39 percent of a disused pipeline connecting the Israeli coastal city of Ashkelon with the north Sinai.

The consortum paid $518 million for the interest in the East Mediterranean Gas Company pipeline.

The mainly undersea pipeline will be used to transport natural gas from the Tamar and Leviathan reservoirs to Egypt from as early as 2019, allowing a 10-year $15 billion deal signed in February with Egypt's Dolphinus to move forward, Delek said in a statement.

It will be the first time Egypt imports gas from Israel.

Israel had bought gas from Egypt but land sections of the pipeline were repeatedly targeted by Sinai jihadists in 2011 and 2012, and soaring demand meant Egypt could use the gas domestically.

Delek CEO Yossi Abu called the pipeline purchase "the most significant milestone for the Israeli gas market since the discoveries" of the reservoirs.

"The Leviathan reservoir is becoming the Mediterranean basin's primary energy anchor, with customers in Israel, Egypt and Jordan," he said.

In September 2016, Jordan struck a deal to buy 300 million cubic feet (8.5 million cubic metres) of Israeli gas per day over 15 years, an agreement estimated to be worth $10 billion.

Israel has limited natural resources but in the past few years it has discovered major gas fields off its coast and is building the infrastructure needed to tap them.

Tamar, which began production in 2013, has estimated reserves of up to 238 billion cubic metres (8.4 trillion cubic feet).

Leviathan, discovered in 2010 and set to begin production in 2019, is estimated to hold 535 billion cubic metres (18.9 trillion cubic feet) of natural gas, along with 34.1 million barrels of condensate.

Israel hopes its gas reserves will give the country energy independence and the prospect of becoming a supplier for Europe as well as forging strategic ties within the region.

Last week, Cyprus, whose offshore reserves border those of Israel, signed a deal paving the way for construction of an undersea pipeline to liquefied natural gas facilities in Egypt to enable production to be re-exported to Europe.