Egypt and War on Gaza: Strategic Interests Versus Egyptian Anger

Author: Khaled Mahmoud
Edited by: Erik Prins

Despite the terrible and intense pressure imposed by the Israeli genocidal war on the occupied and besieged Gaza Strip since October 7, Egyptian-Israeli relations have endured, and the peace agreement between Cairo and Tel Aviv has remained immune from the challenges that almost ravaged it.

Its geographical and strategic location placed Egypt in a difficult position, as achieving a balance between its historical relations with Israel and its solidarity with the Palestinian cause is a sensitive task. The relationship has increasingly had negative repercussions for both sides, which reveals its uncertain nature.

Eighteen years after Hamas took control of Gaza, Egypt faces the dilemma of the chronic Palestinian division between the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) and the Palestinian Authority (PA), in addition to risking deteriorating its relationship with Israel militarily, economically, and politically. The genocidal war Israel has been carrying out against the residents of Gaza since October 2023, pushing Hamas to surrender, has infuriated Egyptian public opinion.

Hamas, which has succeeded so far in igniting the great war between the Arabs and Israel, has created, as former Egyptian Ambassador Hesham Youssef believes, six dilemmas for Egypt in its relations with Israel and the Palestinians.

The outbreak of war, following the daring attack launched by the Palestinian resistance led by the al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas, represented a rare opportunity to catch breath for Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, facing increasingly popular pressure and ridicule due to the dire economic situation at home.

During the years Sisi has spent in power, Egyptian public opinion has shown that all the national vanity projects, which Sisi adopted with stubbornness and extreme determination, did not succeed in extricating the country from its difficult economic and financial situation.

Sisi discovered the truth of the famous saying that every cloud has a silver lining.

Sisi benefited from the war, as it made Egyptians lose interest in the presidential elections and its disputes, and as it increased his popularity, which had diminished due to the economic and social crises.

Sisi used the war to enhance his popularity, portraying himself as the man who confronted the displacement of Palestinians and resisted US and Israeli pressures.

Contrary to expectations, Egypt received regional and international support for its role, as the war on Gaza escalated. Sisi’s phone did not stop ringing, despite the bleak picture of his third term, which relies on an iron fist amid a stifling economic crisis.

Thus, Sisi, who appears to be fortunate, got a second chance to overcome local setbacks and emerge as a guarantor of the country’s stability in light of its tense borders to the east, west, and south, as well as a defender of the Palestinian cause at home and an indispensable regional leader abroad.

The outbreak of war contributed to the early resolution of the elections, which were completely dull and lacked any real candidates except those whom Sisi himself agreed to compete with, in an entirely undemocratic scene, apart from a formal standpoint.

Sisi’s evolving narrative relied on several constantly changing aspects, which formed his strategy for dealing with the Palestinian cause.

Most notably, he retreated from the idea that the only solution was the two-state solution, considering it “exhausted,” and instead called for “recognition of the Palestinian state.”

Sisi previously believed that the two-state solution was the path to a just and lasting peace in the Middle East, with the need for international action to push for its implementation. However, he later considered that this solution had achieved nothing.

In addition, Sisi constantly raised the slogan of rejecting the displacement or attempts to liquidate the Palestinian cause at the expense of neighbouring countries. He played on popular sentiment by emphasising that Egypt’s national security is a red line and that there is no complacency in protecting it.

Sisi did a good job of using the situation to his advantage and contemplated: why not transfer the people of Gaza to the Naqab (Negev), instead of Sinai?

According to an Israeli study, reported by Al Jazeera, Israel saw the Sisi regime as an opportunity to strengthen relations with Egypt, as some believe no Egyptian president has interacted with Israelis so intimately and shown such hostility towards Palestinian factions as Sisi did.

Israel was one of the first countries to support Sisi and also assisted in his ongoing military operations against terrorist groups in Sinai. This support relied on his strategic and security partnership with Israel, which gave the green light to deploy Egyptian forces in large areas of North Sinai. Additionally, the security annex of the Camp David Accords was secretly amended.

Israeli analysts believe that Sisi’s approach to public rapprochement with Israel stems not only from his belief in the pragmatism of the relationship, but also from the significant internal crises he is facing.

Since Sisi took power in June 2014, Egyptian-Israeli relations have seen a great rapprochement, evident in two visits by Sameh Shoukry, the Egyptian Foreign Minister, to Tel Aviv. Shoukry was the first high-ranking Egyptian official in over nine years to visit Israel; later, he attended the funeral of former Israeli President Shimon Peres.

The Israeli army carried out secret operations in the Sinai with the approval of the Egyptian government, starting in 2015, as strategic relations between Egypt and Israel have never been as close as they were during Sisi’s era.

In 2019, during an interview with CBS News’ 60 Minutes, Sisi praised the strength of Egyptian-Israeli relations, describing them as “exemplary,” and made a rare acknowledgement of close security cooperation with Israel in the Sinai Peninsula.

Sisi later requested that the interview not be broadcast, as he feared that acknowledging such cooperation could raise sensitivities in Egypt.

Despite rumours being circulated that Cairo, following the occupation of the Rafah border crossing, is considering reducing diplomatic relations with Israel and withdrawing its ambassador, there are no current plans to suspend relations or abandon the Camp David Accords. Instead, a former commander of Sisi, General Samir Farag, suggested that Israel coordinate closely with Egypt on the next steps and the post-war phase.

While some believe that Israel’s last weapon against Palestine is Egypt’s debts, others think the world cannot end the war between Israel and Hamas without Egypt.

However, Israel is monitoring the level of armament of the Egyptian army, including the possibility of Egypt producing advanced fighter aircraft in cooperation with the French manufacturer Dassault, although military analysts suggest this is linked to the Ethiopian Renaissance Dam crisis.

Israeli media reported that Israel is concerned about Egypt’s new steps to build French fighter jets on its territory, seeing it as significant progress in Egypt’s arms industry.

Media figures affiliated with Sisi noted that Egyptian-Israeli relations are currently at their worst. This unusual message to the Israelis comes amid fears that if Egypt begins to turn against Israel because of the Rafah crossing, it could have wide-ranging repercussions.

Despite Egypt’s secret warnings to the United States about the possibility of abolishing the peace treaty, an Israeli analysis concluded that Egyptian-Israeli relations are in a “deep valley.” However, this is not the first time, as the two countries have successfully navigated many peaks and valleys in their relationship since the signing of the historic peace treaty in 1979.

With years of experience, Cairo and Tel Aviv have maintained common interests and found ways to navigate through the deep valleys in their relations. Their senior intelligence officials spoke regularly, thanks to the security relationship that has strengthened bilateral ties for more than 40 years.

An Egyptian official, wishing to remain anonymous, who worked during ousted President Mohamed Morsi‘s era presents a controversial view, summarising both Morsi’s and Sisi’s approach to the Palestinian cause and the war on Gaza.

He points out that the war on Gaza in 2012 during Morsi’s era lasted only three days, while the war that followed in 2014 during Sisi’s era lasted 51 days, and the current conflict has been ongoing for more than nine months. He concluded by saying, “If Morsi were still in power, the situation would have been different.”

Official Egyptian sources attribute this difference to the organisational relationship between Morsi and the leaders of Hamas, both part of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Even before becoming president, Morsi, who led the Freedom and Justice Party, the former political arm of the Muslim Brotherhood, threatened to reconsider the peace treaty with Israel. Mohamed Mahdi Akef, former head of the Muslim Brotherhood, had rejected the Camp David Treaty from the beginning and never acknowledged it.

Amid fears of the collapse of the peace treaty, Morsi’s brokering of a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas in November 2012 was seen as evidence that he was willing to set aside the Muslim Brotherhood’s ideological opposition and the hostility of most Egyptians towards Israel for the sake of the Egyptian state’s interests.

The Muslim Brotherhood argued that Israel had been involved in the coup against Morsi, based on Israeli press reports about Morsi’s intention to void the peace treaty with Israel and send more Egyptian military forces to the Sinai Peninsula.

However, an Egyptian journalist who worked in Gaza for years said that Egyptian-Israeli relations remained complicated. He points out that Morsi never mentioned the word “Israel” during his rule, and despite his affirmation of commitment to the 1979 Camp David Accords, relations remained cold and almost frozen.

He continued, “Of course, Morsi’s position, being aligned with Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood, was most supportive of the Palestinian movement. During the war in Gaza under his term, he withdrew the ambassador, asked the Egyptian Ministry of Foreign Affairs to summon the Israeli ambassador in protest, and requested emergency meetings of Arab foreign ministers and the Security Council. He also sent his prime minister to the Gaza Strip and allowed Arab and foreign delegations to enter Gaza.”

An official, who spoke to Fanack on the condition of anonymity, believes that the current president, Sisi, maintained diplomatic relations with Israel, while strengthening security cooperation between the two countries, especially in Sinai, to combat terrorism.

He added, “Under Sisi’s rule, the Rafah crossing was opened and closed according to the security and political conditions while strengthening cooperation with Israel. Additionally, Egypt’s policy towards the siege on Gaza was linked to the security conditions in Sinai, relations with Israel, and Egypt’s position on Hamas.”

According to Egyptian national security expert General Mohamed Abdel Wahed, the peace treaty signed between Egypt and Israel provided regional stability, halted the Arab-Israeli conflict, and encouraged Arab countries to move towards normalisation with Israel. This, in turn, imposed a state of stability at the bilateral level in both the political as well as the security arena.

He continued, “However, tension increased after last December, and Egypt’s name was reiterated in the Israeli media, accusing it of involvement in arming Hamas or having tunnels from Sinai that serve Hamas.”

Abdel Wahed believes that despite the Israeli take-over of the buffer zone along the Egyptian border with the Gaza Strip, known as the Philadelphi Corridor, angering Cairo, both the Egyptian and Israeli parties remain committed to the peace treaty.

David Schenker, a former US State Department official, agrees, believing that “the 1979 treaty will likely survive the Gaza war despite these troubling developments.”

Despite the legal arguments to justify the voiding of the treaty, there are warnings that without the treaty, chaos could spread widely across the Middle East.

Although Sisi avoided engaging in arguments with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, media figures close to the president sought to continue the media bluffs. They demanded that he seek a new peace treaty reflecting recent changes and argued that Egypt was not a state willing to go to war.

To calm angry Egyptian public opinion, Sisi used the Arab summit, held in Bahrain in May 2024, to indirectly address Netanyahu, saying, “Whoever thinks that security and military solutions can secure interests or achieve security is delusional, and whoever thinks that brinkmanship can work or achieve gain is mistaken.”

In response to demands for Egypt to enter the Gaza war against Israel, given its strong army, Sisi avoided threatening with war or using Egyptian military capabilities, preferring to avoid escalating regional tensions.

According to Ahmed Fouad Anwar, Professor of Modern Hebrew at Alexandria University and member of the Egyptian Council for Foreign Affairs, Egyptians view the role played by the Egyptian government in this regard as supportive and positive.

He notes that popular awareness of Israel’s plans to address the issue at Egypt’s expense reinforced the official positions. These positions crystallised early on in two main points: considering the transfer of Gaza’s population to Sinai a red line, while insisting on consolidating the Palestinian people’s existence on their land by bringing in relief aid. The latter was done with the participation of civilian organisations, and supported by mass demonstrations.

Additionally, there was an enormous effort to curb the aggression and revive negotiations for a permanent ceasefire and the reconstruction of Gaza.

Some argue that, unlike Morsi, maintaining strong relations with Israel seems to be Sisi’s way of maintaining his rule. Despite this, “the language of escalation that Sisi adopted in the media and politically against the Netanyahu government was a surprise to everyone, given the years of unprecedented understanding with Israel in the peace treaty,” as Mohannad Sabry, journalist at the Italian Institute for International Political Studies argues.

Egypt believes it is more deserving of sponsoring any mediation between Hamas and Israel due to its geographical proximity and historical role in the Palestinian cause. According to analyst Hilal Khashan, Sisi supports the extermination of Hamas but fears the creation of a new regional reality.

Sisi’s regime has ranged from extreme hostility towards Hamas to prevailing coldness towards all Palestinian factions, seen as a tactic related to settling scores and exporting an internal crisis, but it risks weakening his image as a strong leader.

Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza caused an exceptional energy crisis in Egypt after Israel stopped supplying natural gas.

Egyptian Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly offered an embarrassed apology to the Egyptian people for what he described as an unprecedented crisis, which led to an increase in load shedding and power outages of three hours. Sisi then intervened to reduce it to only two hours per day.

In an implicit reference to Israel, Madbouly spoke of a field in a neighbouring country going out of service due to a technical failure. In fact, Israel backed down from expanding gas exports to Egypt. The US oil company Chevron, which operates the Tamar gas field off the coast of southern Israel, halted production on instructions from the Israeli Ministry of Energy.

As a result of the month-long closure of the field, due to security concerns after the start of the war on Gaza, Egypt suffered an electricity crisis due to energy shortages and was no longer able to increase gas supplies to Europe due to the war.

These developments indicate how Egypt’s internal and external crises are linked, and how the long honeymoon with Netanyahu’s government has ended. The war in Gaza consequently led to the failure of Sisi’s plan to make Egypt a regional centre for exporting liquefied natural gas (LNG) to Europe from its plants on the Mediterranean.

Historically, the Palestinian cause has had significant interest of all Egyptian leaders since 1948. The preamble to the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty, concluded in Washington D.C. in 1979, stated that it was an important step towards a comprehensive peace in the region and a settlement of the Arab-Israeli conflict in all its aspects.

Former Egyptian foreign minister Ismail Fahmy, who resigned just two days before President Anwar Sadat went to Jerusalem, concluded that Israel had succeeded through the treaty in securing its southern front, as the Sinai Peninsula had become “demilitarised.”

Nabil Elaraby, former Egyptian foreign minister and former secretary-general of the Arab League, admitted that Egypt lost much of its leadership and prestige in the Arab world by signing what was considered a separate peace with Israel.

Relations with Israel have always been linked to the nature of the president in power, including President Hosni Mubarak, who maintained a state of cold peace and good relations with Tel Aviv during his thirty years in power.

He became the second Arab president to visit Israel, after his predecessor, the late Anwar Sadat. This was his only visit to Israel as president, attending the funeral of former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabi in November 1995.

Mubarak resisted US and Israeli pressure to make concessions, including a trade-off on Palestinian rights in exchange for Israel completing its withdrawal from Sinai, which it had occupied in the June 1967 war.

A year before Mubarak’s regime was toppled, his former secretary, Moustafa Elfeki, stirred controversy by saying that the next president of Egypt would need US approval and no objection from the Israelis. Meanwhile, a US poll at the time showed that 54% of Egyptians supported voiding the peace treaty.

After Hamas won the 2006 legislative elections and took control of the strip, Israel tightened the air, sea, and land blockade on the Strip in mid-2007.

Following Hamas’ takeover of the Gaza Strip after a bloody conflict with the Palestinian Authority, Mubarak refused to open the Rafah crossing, unless the PA President Mahmoud Abbas’ forces and European observers would return. Mubarak accused Hamas of trying to monopolise the crossing, in violation of the 2005 agreement that stipulated the presence of European Union observers.

Egypt has not forgiven Hamas for blowing up most of the 12-km-long wall separating the Gaza Strip from Egypt in January 2008, allowing hundreds of thousands of Palestinians to cross the border.