Electricity grid
Electricity gridIsrael news photo: Hillel Meir

Egypt has resumed natural gas deliveries to Israel, nine days after an attack on the el-Arish pipeline halted the flow for the seventh time since February.

The East Mediterranean Gas Company (EMG)  is responsible for maintaining the pipelines that deliver the precious resource from the Sinai Peninsula to both Israel and Jordan.

But the supplies have been interrupted repeatedly due to sabotage and attacks by Sinai Bedouin and terrorists who are intent on halting Egyptian gas supplies to Israel.

Last Wednesday, Majdi Tawfil, head of Egypt's state-controlled supplier Gasco, told Bloomberg News that repairs following the most recent attack would be completed within a week to 10 days.

Since that time, however, engineers managed to move up the schedule, against the backdrop of Israel's return of its ambassador to Cairo after a hiatus that followed a violent attack on the Israeli embassy in September by hundreds of Egyptian protesters.

Early last week, Cairo authorities arrested a suspect in connection with the bombings of the pipeline, and a second suspect in connection with the 20-member terrorist cell attack in August on Eilat.