Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu held a phone conversation with Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sisi on Tuesday morning, three days after the murder of three IDF soldiers by an Egyptian border police officer.

A statement from the Prime Minister’s Office said that El-Sisi expressed his deepest condolences over the incident and Netanyahu thanked him for his commitment to a thorough and joint investigation into the incident.

“The two leaders expressed their commitment to continue strengthening the peace and security cooperation that is vital to both countries,” the statement concluded.

Egyptian reports said that Israel requested a detailed report from Egypt on the investigation of the terrorist’s family and friends.

Following Israel’s return of the terrorist’s body on Monday, the terrorist, Mohamad Salah, was buried in his hometown in the presence of a very limited number of family members, who refused to speak to the media.

A former officer who preferred to remain anonymous told Al-Jazeera that Salah’s relatives could be subjected to “long questioning and investigations by the security services” and claimed that people in the area said that the security forces were already at Salah’s house and took his brother and uncle to an unknown location to question them about Salah’s political and religious leanings.

Meanwhile, many Egyptians are hailing Salah as a hero for his actions. A resident of the area where the terrorist lived told Al-Jazeera that Salah’s heroism should be celebrated, adding: “If he had ammunition, he would have killed more of them.”

A member of the Egyptian Socialist Movement, Alah Jamil, called Salah, “the new Suleiman Khater,” referring to the Egyptian soldier who machine-gunned a group of Israeli vacationers on a beach resort in the Sinai in 1985, killing three Israeli adults and four children. Witnesses of the attack said that the Egyptian Central Security Forces who were nearby not only refused to help the wounded victims but also stopped an Israeli doctor and other tourists at gunpoint from administering any medical aid, leaving the wounded Israelis to bleed to death.

Jamil told Al-Jazeera that he believes that Salah’s actions sends an important message against the normalization of relations with Israel, adding that the peace agreement with Israel has failed miserably at the popular level.

(YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)