Abdel Fattah al-Sisi. Photo: Brendan Smialowski/Getty

Abdel Fattah El-Sisi

President of Egypt

If one person can take the lion’s share of the credit for preventing Egypt from collapsing under the rule of the Muslim Brotherhood, it’s the country’s current president, Abdel Fattah El-Sisi. As chief of Egypt’s armed forces, Sisi ousted President Mohammed Morsi in 2013, in the midst of a popular uprising against Muslim Brotherhood rule. In May 2014, he won a resounding victory in Egypt’s presidential election, with immediate positive effects for Israel. During the summer 2014 war between Israel and Hamas – the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood – Sisi ordered Egyptian forces to destroy the underground smuggling tunnels connecting Sinai with Gaza. His firm belief that Islamist extremism presents the greatest threat to stability in the Middle East means that, for now, Israel again has a reliable strong-man ally in charge of its biggest neighbor.