For several weeks now, Israel has been orchestrating a campaign hostile to Abdel Fattah al-Sissi’s Egypt, a faithful ally for many years, now portrayed as a military threat on its doorstep. While the Egyptian army is indeed renewing its armaments, Israel’s attitude is mostly explained by its determination to go through with the planned ethnic cleansing of Gaza.
Since the beginning of 2025, Israel has launched diplomatic and media campaigns hostile to Egypt, accusing it of violating the Camp David agreements. Cairo is accused of having deployed troops in the Sinai and intending to set up military infrastructure there - in particular developing the al-Arish airfield and port as well as other military installations.
According to Israel, such projects were not part of the original agreement. But the Israelis themselves have recently occupied the Philadelphia corridor along the border between Egypt and Gaza in total violation of that peace agreement. Yet none of these developments have prevented the volumes of Israeli gas imported by Cairo from rising several times in recent months - 20 % up in October 2024, 10 % in November, 17 % in January 2025.
This scenario gives some idea of the nature of Egypto-Israeli relations since the signature of the Camp David accords 1978. At that time President Anwar Sadat had placed Egypt squarely in the sphere of US influence, committing Cairo to sharing US strategic aims, such as making peace with Israel - a country which an overwhelming majority of Egyptians regard as their principal enemy - and fighting communism.
All successive Egyptian governments have taken advantage of this situation to portray themselves to the Americans as the regime protecting Israel from the hatred and hostility of the most populous country in the Arab word. Cairo tries to channel the people’s anger and frustration by having its secret services organise demonstrations. Thus the Egyptian authorities staged a protest of several thousand people on 9 April at the border with Rafah against Israel’s plans to forcibly displace the Gaza population. But at the same time the Public Prosecutor’s Office extended the detention of dozens of young men who had demonstrated their solidarity with Gaza independently. So with one hand they distribute banners and with the other they ban the demonstrations they haven’t organised for fear they may get out of hand and end up threatening the regime’s security.
Thus the Gaza Strip has become one of the main preoccupations shared by Egypt and Israel. For the latter, Gaza represents the most dangerous and most important area of Palestinian resistance to their occupation. The enclave’s only other border is with Egypt. And until October 2023, the Rafah crossing with Egypt was the Gaza strip’s only window to the outside world.
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