Israel’s No-Longer Cold Peace with Egypt

July 13 2016

On Sunday, Egypt’s foreign minister, Sameh Shoukry, came to Jerusalem and met with the Israeli prime minister. This was the first such high-level visit in nine years. Usually, talks have been conducted with Egyptian intelligence officials and out of the public eye, and have focused on security issues—specifically, containing jihadists in Gaza and Sinai. This very public visit, argues David Makovsky, is a sign that the two countries’ de-facto military alliance could be mutating into a diplomatic one:

Netanyahu has expressed concern that the Obama administration will consider supporting a UN Security Council resolution [about the Israel-Palestinian] conflict at year’s end. He views any such move as the equivalent of an imposed solution . . . that neither Israel nor the Palestinians could accept. Netanyahu is also concerned that a French peace initiative could gather steam and feed into a [similarly troublesome] Security Council resolution. . . .

Netanyahu is likely counting on the pressure [his meeting with Shoukry] creates for Mahmoud Abbas. While the PA president has had no problem rejecting Netanyahu’s call to resume talks, . . . bringing Egypt into the picture raises the cost of any such rejection. . . .

Beyond the Palestinian issue, . . . Shoukry was probably also curious about Netanyahu’s trip to Africa last week. Among other states, he visited Ethiopia, which is planning a Nile dam that could hurt Egypt’s access to the river’s water. Cairo seems to believe that Netanyahu’s visit could impact whether Ethiopia will agree to a water-sharing formula with Egypt.

Read more at Washington Institute for Near East Policy

More about: Benjamin Netanyahu, Egypt, Ethiopia, Israel & Zionism, Israel diplomacy, Peace Process

Egypt Is Trapped by the Gaza Dilemma It Helped to Create

Feb. 14 2025

Recent satellite imagery has shown a buildup of Egyptian tanks near the Israeli border, in violation of Egypt-Israel agreements going back to the 1970s. It’s possible Cairo wants to prevent Palestinians from entering the Sinai from Gaza, or perhaps it wants to send a message to the U.S. that it will take all measures necessary to keep that from happening. But there is also a chance, however small, that it could be preparing for something more dangerous. David Wurmser examines President Abdel Fatah el-Sisi’s predicament:

Egypt’s abysmal behavior in allowing its common border with Gaza to be used for the dangerous smuggling of weapons, money, and materiel to Hamas built the problem that exploded on October 7. Hamas could arm only to the level that Egypt enabled it. Once exposed, rather than help Israel fix the problem it enabled, Egypt manufactured tensions with Israel to divert attention from its own culpability.

Now that the Trump administration is threatening to remove the population of Gaza, President Sisi is reaping the consequences of a problem he and his predecessors helped to sow. That, writes Wurmser, leaves him with a dilemma:

On one hand, Egypt fears for its regime’s survival if it accepts Trump’s plan. It would position Cairo as a participant in a second disaster, or nakba. It knows from its own history; King Farouk was overthrown in 1952 in part for his failure to prevent the first nakba in 1948. Any leader who fails to stop a second nakba, let alone participates in it, risks losing legitimacy and being seen as weak. The perception of buckling on the Palestine issue also resulted in the Egyptian president Anwar Sadat’s assassination in 1981. President Sisi risks being seen by his own population as too weak to stand up to Israel or the United States, as not upholding his manliness.

In a worst-case scenario, Wurmser argues, Sisi might decide that he’d rather fight a disastrous war with Israel and blow up his relationship with Washington than display that kind of weakness.

Read more at The Editors

More about: Egypt, Gaza War 2023