Israel-Gaza war one year on: Egypt gains political standing but security challenges persist

Cairo's mediating powers have come to the fore but Egypt's borders were compromised by Israel's capture of Salah Al Din corridor

Egypt's President Abdel Fattah El Sisi attends the Call for Action: Urgent Humanitarian Response for Gaza conference in Jordan this summer. EPA

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Bordering Gaza and Israel, Egypt has historically been connected to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. When the war on Gaza broke out on October 7, the country that was the first to sign a peace treaty with Israel in the region found itself having to navigate the diplomatic, political and economic implications of the latest conflict.

A year on, the war in Gaza has not abated and as fighting spreads further into the region, it poses serious security challenges for the Egyptian government, while also handing Cairo considerable economic and political opportunity. The Arab nation has regained much of its standing as a regional powerhouse, taken its vital relations with the US to levels of co-operation not seen in years and developed closer relations with Qatar, raising the prospect of future aid and investment from the energy-rich Gulf state.

“Egypt was dealt a bad hand but played it really well,” said Michael Hanna, the New York-based director of the US programme at the International Crisis Group.

An international, multibillion dollar bailout led by the UAE was unveiled in February to save Egypt's economy from what appeared to be certain meltdown. The $50 billion package was largely in recognition of the economic hit Egypt took as a result of the war but also to acknowledge its key role alongside the US and Qatar of trying to mediate a Gaza ceasefire, despite those efforts having been unsuccessful.

“The Gaza war has also shown Egypt to have little or no leverage over Israel and that, in turn, exposed serious vulnerability with Cairo doing nothing by the way of reprisals against Israel,” Mr Hanna told The National.

Egypt fought four wars against Israel between 1948 and 1973 before both countries signed a US-sponsored peace treaty in 1979 that serves to this day as a cornerstone of stability in a volatile Middle East.

Cairo has since sought, to no avail, to use its relations with Israel to push for a comprehensive settlement of the Middle East conflict but its efforts to broker a truce similar to those that ended previous Hamas-Israel wars, including in 2021, were met with no success.

Salah Al Din corridor

At the start, Egypt's biggest fear from the Gaza war was the potential mass migration of Palestinians into its sparsely populated Sinai Peninsula. When that did not happen, Egypt's concern shifted to the attacks by Yemen's Iran-backed Houthis on Red Sea shipping that forced vessels to change course, and nearly halved its vital foreign currency revenue from the Suez Canal, the strategic waterway linking the Red Sea and the Mediterranean.

Egypt's latest source of alarm is the dispute with Israel over the latter's capture in May of a narrow strip of land, Salah Al Din, also known as the Philadelphi Corridor, which runs the entire length of the Egypt-Gaza border – about 14km – on the Palestinian side, including the Rafah border crossing.

Egypt maintains Israel's military presence in the area breaches the 1979 treaty and subsequent accords. Israel, for its part, insists that underground tunnels between Egypt and Gaza serve to keep the Hamas arsenal replenished with military equipment smuggled into the enclave. Egypt has denied the charge and the dispute with Israel over the area has become one of the main obstacles preventing a deal to pause the war and secure the release of hostages held by Hamas.

“We categorically reject the [Israeli] military presence in the crossing and the corridor. It's a position that we will never deviate from,” Egyptian Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty told a news conference last week alongside visiting US Secretary of State Antony Blinken.

Despite increasing tension in Egypt's relations with Israel and the seriousness of the accusations levelled by Cairo against its eastern neighbour, President Abdel Fattah El Sisi has not ordered any significant punitive actions against Israel other than the declaration of his government's intention to join South Africa in the case before the International Court of Justice that accuses Israel of committing genocide in Gaza.

Sources say Mr El Sisi declined to talk directly to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu shortly after the war began.

“People in Egypt feel powerless and humiliated in the face of Israel's actions in Gaza, but there's very little by the way of reprisals that can be taken,” said Mr Hanna. “There's little the government can do beside pleading Egypt's case on the international stage.”

Egypt has deployed troops and armoured vehicles on its side of the border with Gaza in a deliberate breach of the limitations imposed by the peace treaty and related accords on the number of forces and weaponry allowed in the area, according to sources and video footage released by the military.

“It's thanks to US pressure that Egypt has not summoned back its ambassador in Tel Aviv, as many had expected and as Cairo had done over previous quarrels with Israel stretching back to the 1980s,” a source told The National. “Washington counselled that the move could complicate matters and fuel tension in the region.”

Closer ties with Hamas

Another aspect of the fallout from the Gaza war is that Egypt has edged closer to Hamas, designated a terrorist group by the US, the EU and Israel, but which Cairo, in the words of Mr Abdelatty, sees as a “national Palestinian faction,” a phrasing that places the group on a par with Fatah, the dominant faction in the internationally recognised Palestinian Authority based in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

It's a far cry from a little more than a decade ago when Cairo accused armed Hamas figures of slipping into Egypt during the chaos of the 2011 uprising and breaking open several prisons to free leaders of the now-banned Muslim Brotherhood, whose version of political Islam underpins Hamas's own ideology. Egypt had also accused the militant group of aiding extremists fighting its security forces in northern Sinai.

The rapprochement in Hamas-Egypt relations is also a reflection of Cairo's anger with the tragically high death toll among Palestinian civilians, about 41,500, and Israel's scorched-earth policy in Gaza, where large built-up areas housing state institutions, universities and schools have been razed. Egypt also disagrees with the assessment consistently offered by Israel and the US that Hamas is to blame for the deadlock in the ceasefire negotiations.

“The problem lies in the absence of the political will of a certain party,” Mr Abdelatty said, making a thinly veiled reference to Israel. “Every time we reach the moment of reckoning when it comes to reaching an agreement, excuses and claims are made up to distract everyone away from that moment.”

On at least one level, the Egyptian government has improved its international standing as a result of the Gaza war, breaking out from a period of isolation over its management of the economy and on account of its often criticised human rights record, according to author and sociopolitical expert Ammar Ali Hassan.

“All that was pushed aside when the war broke out and Egypt emerged as the country with a vital role to play as a neighbour of both Gaza and Israel and because of its relations with Hamas,” said Mr Hassan. “Overnight, heads of state and top officials from across the globe rushed to Cairo for talks with Egyptian leaders, whom they commended on organising relief supplies for Gaza while trying to broker a truce.

“That improved diplomatic standing and the large rescue package that followed relieved much of the pressure on the government to change course on economic policies or grant more freedoms.”

Indeed, the US State Department this month highlighted Cairo's important role in Gaza peace efforts when it announced plans to give it a full $1.3 billion in military aid, overriding congressional requirements that Washington hold back some of it if Egypt fails to show adequate progress on human rights. On September 24, the State Department also approved the potential sale to Egypt of 720 in-demand Stinger missiles for $740 million, the Pentagon said.