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 with popular anger spreading across its territory in the midst of an 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 dizzying deterioration of the situation in their 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 could 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 raised the option publicly and through diplomatic channels since the start 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 downplayed the possibility.
The Egyptian authorities have rejected the idea categorically 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 must be on protecting civilians.
“Egypt opens its borders to the wounded from Gaza, to those seeking education, and to all nationalities from the Strip. But forced displacement, in submission to the will of an occupying state that wants to liquidate the issue in connivance with Western and international governments, is a matter that Egypt rejects, and it will work to thwart these plans,” says diplomat Mohamed Hegazy, former adviser to Egypt’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Equally or even 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 soil, which would give Israel grounds to attack Egyptian territory. At the same time, these factions could revitalize extremist groups in northern Sinai, just when 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 had 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 agreements [between Egypt and Israel],” he suggests.
## Debt relief
The main quid pro quo being considered to tempt the Egyptian authorities into accepting a forced displacement of Palestinians is substantial relief on their 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 are also generating concern because, contrary to what the Israeli authorities seem to suggest, northeastern Sinai is not an empty desert. In the last decade, as part 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 forced displacement in that area has sparked 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 people of Sinai that they would return to their lands on 10 October, which is the week the war began,” he adds, so now “Egypt has a boiling internal problem with this displaced population.”
Omar Shaban, director of the Gaza research center 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 waiting to return to Gaza already, 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 mediator of reference in moments of crisis in Gaza, and thus assert its relevance in the region, especially before Washington. In 2021, for example, Egypt was able to forge a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas after 11 days of bombardment over 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 kidnapped in the Strip, is being overshadowed by the intervention of Qatar, which 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 a joint statement — has allowed Cairo to capitalize on its strategic location and maintain a certain degree of control over the agenda.
On the domestic front, the Israeli offensive on Gaza and the crimes being recorded 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 solid 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 stepped up the security deployment in the face of the danger that this collective anger and frustration could turn against them just as the country is suffering a severe economic crisis that has affected 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 last 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 the Israelis and the Americans are making of him is something he really cannot do,” he notes. The president is performing “a very difficult balancing act,” he adds, and “to that can be added a layer of economic crisis on top of everything.”
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Text © El País — archived here with attribution to the source. — Machine translation for archival reference. — Original source