Media coverage
El País · 2023-11-06
Israel’s devastating military offensive on Gaza is placing Egypt in an increasingly precarious position as Cairo manages humanitarian aid deliveries, the evacuation of foreigners, and mediation with Qatar over hostages while also facing domestic anger amid a severe economic crisis. Egyptian authorities categorically reject any forced displacement of Palestinians into Sinai, viewing it as both a blow to Palestinian statehood aspirations and a direct threat to Egypt’s national security, while the crisis also exposes the limits of Egypt’s regional influence and intensifies internal political pressure.
Israel’s devastating military offensive on Gaza is placing Egypt in an increasingly precarious position as Cairo manages humanitarian aid deliveries, the evacuation of foreigners, and mediation with Qatar over hostages while also facing domestic anger amid a severe economic crisis. Egyptian authori…
Israel’s brutal military offensive against Gaza is placing Egypt in an increasingly delicate position. Since 7 October, when Hamas launched the attack against Israel, Cairo has had to manage the delivery of humanitarian aid to the Strip, the evacuation of foreigners, and mediation alongside Qatar for the release of hostages. At the same time, it must deal with internal protests and widespread popular anger across its territory amid a full-blown economic crisis.
From the outset, Cairo has stated that any resolution of the crisis that seeks to guarantee peace and stability in the region over the long term must be built on the basis of the two-State solution and an end to Israel’s unilateral acts. But in the short term, the position of the Egyptian authorities in the face of the headlong deterioration of the situation in their own backyard is being shaped by their national security considerations, their desire to remain an influential actor in the area, especially in the eyes of the United States, and their fears that internal solidarity with Palestine may turn against them.
One of the scenarios causing the greatest alarm in Cairo is the forced displacement of Palestinians from Gaza to the Sinai Peninsula by Israel, whose authorities have publicly raised the option and done so through diplomatic channels since the beginning of the military offensive in the Strip. Fears over this proposal were initially heightened because senior United States officials said they were negotiating the opening of a safe passage for civilians to leave Gaza, although in recent days they have cooled that possibility.
The Egyptian authorities have categorically rejected the idea because they do not want to be complicit in a forced displacement of Gaza’s population that would bury the Palestinian aspiration to create a State that includes the Strip. Cairo maintains that Israel, as the occupying power, is responsible for the enclave, and that the focus should be on the protection of civilians.
“Egypt opens its borders to the wounded from Gaza, to those seeking education, and to all nationalities in the Strip. But forced displacement, in submission to the will of an occupying State that wants to liquidate the issue in collusion with Western and international governments, is a matter that Egypt rejects, and it will work to thwart these plans,” says diplomat Mohamed Hegazy, a former adviser to Egypt’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
As important as, or more important than, its political calculations, the Egyptian authorities consider that the forced relocation of Palestinians to Sinai would pose a threat to their national security. On the one hand, Palestinian armed factions could strike Israel from Egyptian territory, which would give Israel grounds to attack Egyptian territory. At the same time, these factions could revitalize extremist groups in northern Sinai, just as Egypt is managing to reassert its control in the area after a decade of brutal war against the local branch of the Islamic State, which included numerous members from Gaza.
“The [Palestinian] militant factions would rebuild their capabilities to a much greater extent inside Egypt, because they would have a much larger border, a much larger area, and they would be in Sinai, which is where the weapons come from,” warns Mohannad Sabry, a security expert on the peninsula. “At that point you could already say goodbye to the peace accords [between Egypt and Israel],” he suggests.
## Debt forgiveness
The main quid pro quo being floated to tempt the Egyptian authorities into accepting a forced displacement of Palestinians is substantial forgiveness of its high debt at a time when the country is going through a severe economic crisis. But Cairo flatly denies this option, and on 31 October, Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly announced a new five-year plan to develop North Sinai.
Rumors about a forced relocation of Gazans also generate concern because, contrary to what the Israeli authorities seem to suggest, northeastern Sinai is not an empty desert. In the last decade, in the framework of its counterterrorism campaign, Egypt established a buffer zone around the border with Gaza in which it demolished thousands of homes and expelled tens of thousands of people. The possibility of a forced displacement in that area has prompted protests in recent weeks by hundreds of residents demanding their own right of return, according to local human rights groups.
“North Sinai was never empty, it always had its population,” Sabry explains. “The [Egyptian] army had promised the displaced from Sinai that they would return to their lands on 10 October, which is the week the war began,” he adds, so now “Egypt has an internal problem with this displaced population that is reaching a boiling point.”
Omar Shaban, the director of the Gaza-based think tank Pal-Think for Strategic Studies, says that the proposal of forced displacement “is also totally rejected by the Palestinians,” who “are [actively] expressing this rejection.” In this regard, Shaban notes that there are hundreds of Palestinians in Egypt already waiting to return to Gaza, and that a large part of the population in the north of the Strip has rejected the Israeli order to move south.
On the diplomatic level, the security and political relations that Egypt maintains with Israel and Hamas have given Cairo the opportunity in recent years to consolidate itself as the go-to mediator in moments of crisis in Gaza, and thereby assert its relevance in the region, especially before Washington. In 2021, for example, Egypt was able to broker a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas after 11 days of bombardment of the Strip.
## Limits of Egyptian influence
The magnitude of the current crisis, however, is revealing the limits of this influence and, despite its sustained efforts, Cairo has been unable to halt the spiral of violence in Gaza. Moreover, its image as an effective mediator on sensitive issues, such as the release of hostages abducted in the Strip, is being overshadowed by Qatar’s intervention, as it maintains close relations with Hamas’s political wing and with the United States.
Even so, Egypt’s relative success in leading the delivery of humanitarian aid to Gaza, coordinating the evacuation of foreigners, and organizing an international summit to address the situation — although it ended without an agreement or joint communiqué — has allowed Cairo to capitalize on its strategic location and maintain a certain control over the agenda.
On the domestic front, the Israeli offensive on Gaza and the crimes being committed there pose a major political challenge for the Egyptian authorities, who are being forced to maintain an increasingly difficult balance between their relations with Israel and the West and strong social support for the Palestinian cause, a major catalyst for protests.
The authorities have so far tried to channel the widespread popular anger through controlled demonstrations, but they have also intensified the security deployment in view of the danger that this collective anger and frustration could turn against them precisely at a time when the country is suffering a severe economic crisis that has impacted broad sectors of society.
In recent weeks, significant protests have taken place at Al-Azhar Mosque, one of the most prestigious religious institutions in the Islamic world, and trade unions, professional associations, and student organizations have mobilized, all of them harshly repressed over the past decade. Protests have also taken place in Cairo’s iconic Tahrir Square, the epicenter of the 2011 revolution.
“The Palestinian cause is a very complex issue within Egypt itself,” says Maged Mandour, an Egyptian political analyst. “[Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi] is in a very complicated situation, because the request being made of him by the Israelis and the Americans is something he really cannot do,” he notes. The president is striking “a very difficult balance,” he adds, and “on top of that there is the layer of economic crisis, which compounds everything.”
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