In a few weeks’ time, Egypt will issue its new list of diplomatic postings abroad. This list of nominated diplomats, which usually emerges each spring, is still in the making, according to Foreign Ministry sources.
Several capitals are on this year’s list awaiting Egyptian nominations for ambassadors. Tel Aviv, sources say, is one of the most difficult choices.
“There is no intention of downgrading diplomatic relations with Israel. This is not how we handle our problems with Israel,” said an informed source at the Foreign Ministry.
However, he added, that the final decision on the posting of a new Egyptian ambassador is still in the works.
According to the same source, there is already “the name of a tentative nominee”. However, he added that this name was proposed before the Israeli army entered the Philadelphi Corridor on 7 May last year as part of its war on Gaza that started on 7 October 2023.
On that day, Israel took control of the Gaza side of the Rafah Crossing that connects Gaza with Egypt and that has been under Palestinian control since Israel exercised its unilateral disengagement from Gaza in 2005, first under the Palestinian Authority (PA) and later under Hamas after it took control of Gaza in 2007.
Under the “Agreed Arrangements Regarding the Deployment of a Designated Force of Border Guards Along the Border in the Rafah Area” signed by Cairo and Tel Aviv in September 2005, Egypt expanded its presence on the border by 750 border guards. The joint authority for the Rafah Border crossing was transferred to the PA and Egypt for the restricted passage of Palestinian ID card holders and others in exceptional circumstances.
“For our part, we were very careful to manage the borders with maximum commitment. We coordinated with Israel when we had a demand or a concern, but we never violated the agreements, neither the Peace Treaty nor the subsequent agreements,” the same source said.
He added that contrary to claims in the Israeli press over the past few weeks, it was Israel not Egypt who violated the terms. “Egypt did not make a fuss, but it had to react nonetheless,” he stated.
TERMS OF PEACE: Diplomatic sources in Cairo say that since the beginning of the Israeli war on Gaza, Egypt has sent Israel repeated messages demanding that the Israeli Army stays away from the direct borders with Egypt, namely the Philadelphi Corridor, the 14-km line known in Arabic as the Salaheddin Route.
The name Philadelphi was chosen by the Israeli army.
However, contrary to the Egyptian demand, Israel entered the corridor and has declined to exit. For its part, Egypt has asked its ambassador in Tel Aviv to return to Cairo without any statement recalling him for consultation.
Diplomatic sources say that the ambassador had been serving in an extended posting that was supposed to come to an end earlier than May 2024. The extension, they suggested, was prompted by two things: Egypt did not wish to nominate a new ambassador in the midst of a horrifying Israeli war on the Palestinians, and it wanted to keep its ambassador in Israel to facilitate Egyptian mediation to end the war.
The ambassador packed up and headed to Cairo without making the customary goodbyes that an ambassador would normally make upon the end of his post. At the same time, Amira Oron, the serving Israeli ambassador in Cairo since 2020, was already spending most of her time in Israel due to the security constraints of her country’s war on Gaza and the limited access she was permitted due to the horrors that Israel was committing in Gaza.
Unlike Egypt, Israel then nominated a new ambassador to Egypt. He is still waiting for the official agreement that the government of the host country has to send to all new ambassadors.
Foreign Ministry sources say that restoring the ambassadorial situation to normal will need two things to happen: a sustainable ceasefire in the Israeli war on Gaza and an end, or at least the beginning of an end, to the Israeli presence in the Philadelphi Corridor in line with the terms agreed upon in the context of the Egypt-Israeli Peace Treaty.
According to an informed Israeli security source, “Israel is playing games to push the Palestinians from Gaza into Sinai and to create a de facto situation whereby the Gazans are transferred into Sinai. We have been pushing back, and we will continue to push back despite the backing Israel has from the US on the matter.”
He added that Egypt has introduced security measures in Sinai to avoid any forced entry of the Palestinians, even if they are pushed by the Israelis into escaping into Gaza.
Egypt, he said, had declined a wide range of proposals with regards to Gaza and Sinai. As far as Cairo is concerned, he stated, Gaza is for the Palestinians and Sinai is strictly Egyptian territory.
MANY CHAPTERS OF SINAI: When Salah Salam woke up in the early hours of 5 June 1967, he did not think that the sounds of jet fighters in the skies over his family’s house in Arish were Israeli fighters who had taken to the skies after the defeat of the Egyptian and Arab armies in the June 1967 War.
It was just a matter of hours before Salam, a medical doctor and a member of the Egyptian Parliament, realised that Sinai was occupied by Israel. The account of the hard realities of 5 June 1967 are included in his book published as Yaomiat Tabib Sinawi: Al-Sanawat Al-Egaf wa Mehnat A-Ehtelal (A Doctor from Sinai: A Memoir of Tough Years under Crippling Occupation) in 2023 on the 45th anniversary of the 1979 Egyptian-Israeli Peace Treaty.
This 182-page volume is a testimony of what it was like for a young Egyptian of Sinai origins to live under the Israeli occupation, with all the security harassment, economic hardship, and constant fear that this entailed.
It was tormenting to see Israeli tanks on the soil of Sinai and the brutal violations of houses in Arish committed by the Israeli army as they searched for soldiers or arms. It was even more horrific to see the Israeli military killing Egyptian soldiers who were bravely trying to fight back after a disorderly withdrawal was ordered by then Egyptian minister of defence Abdel-Hakim Amer.
Salam’s book shares accounts of the Egyptian resistance, including militant operations that civilians in Sinai carried out under the guidance of the Sinai Arab Organisation. It is a reminder that contrary to Israeli propaganda, the people of Sinai never wanted to break ties with Egypt.
Salam’s book is one of many testimonies of the brutality that Israel exercised in Sinai, as it did in neighbouring Gaza, which until 1967 was under the administrative rule of Egypt after Israel was established in May 1948 on almost half of the land of Mandatory Palestine.
Published in books or shared in press or radio and television programmes, the accounts of Egyptians who lived under the Israeli occupation of Sinai and of officers, soldiers and volunteer resistance fighters who battled for the liberation of Sinai remind us of the deliberate Israeli acts of humiliation to which Egyptians, and Palestinians in Gaza, were subject to in typical acts of coercion.
The memory of the 6 October 1973 War, the beginning of the liberation of Sinai from the Israeli occupation, is celebrated with much “pride and joy” in every testimony from the period.
When the October War ended with the ceasefire announced on 26 October 1973, Egypt, due to the US-supported Israeli military fightback, had not regained all of Sinai. However, after two rounds of disengagement talks between the two countries, in 1975 Egypt regained 4,500 square km of the 60,088 square km of Sinai.
After the Egyptian-Israeli Peace Treaty that was signed in March 1979, Israel started to gradually undo its settlements and to withdraw its army from Sinai. Two months later, Egypt raised its flag in Arish, with subsequent Israeli withdrawals executed in July and November of the same year.
On 25 April 1982, with the exception of Taba Egypt had regained all of Sinai. A tough legal and diplomatic process followed to allow for the restoration of this city as a result of a hard-won arbitration ruling in September 1988. The details of this process are documented in a book by Nabil Al-Arabi, Egypt’s former foreign minister and a former Arab League secretary-general, who headed the Egyptian team.
Published in 2011 under the title of Taba, Camp David, Al-Gidar Al-Aazel — Siraa Al-Diplomaciya min Maglis Al-Amn Ila Al-Mahkama Al-Dawliya (Taba, Camp David, the Separation Wall — Battles of Diplomacy from the Security Council to the International Court of Justice), Al-Arabi’s book is a testimony to the relentless Israeli attempt to maintain control of parts of Sinai in violation of the Peace Treaty.
Having been party to the Egyptian delegation that joined former president Anwar Al-Sadat in the US-sponsored Egyptian-Israeli talks in Camp David in 1978, Al-Arabi’s book is not short on details of how Israel, and particularly then Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin, resented having to give back Sinai, especially Sharm El-Sheikh at the south of the peninsula.
“Israelis love Sinai. They just love coming back,” said Omran, a taxi driver who has been working in the peninsula’s southern part for over 25 years. At the southeast of Sinai, Dahab, he said, has long been a favourite destination for Israeli holidaymakers. “They just love Sinai. It is not unusual to hear one of them saying that it was theirs and that they don’t understand why their government gave it back,” he added.
According to the Egyptian-Israeli Peace Treaty, holders of Israeli passports can travel to Sinai without a visa, unlike to the rest of Egypt. Israeli tourists generally come to Sinai by car, and only very rare incidents of hostility have been recorded against Israeli tourists in Sinai. According to the Israeli press, Sinai is a favourite destination.
However, Omran said that despite the fact that the Israelis are well treated in general, it is unusual for them to receive friendly treatment from many people. Himself born after the signing of the Peace Treaty, Omran is aware that once Sinai was under Israeli occupation and that on the sand of Sinai Israeli tanks crushed to death Egyptian soldiers.
With the Israeli genocidal war on Gaza, the Israeli press has reported a decline in the number of Israelis who head to Sinai on holiday. But the decline is not estimated to be below that which occurred during the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020-2022.
“All Egyptians know about the wars with Israel. They all know that Israel occupied Sinai, but it is strictly the people of Sinai who know what the Israeli occupation is all about,” said Omran.
He added that the older generations’ stories of the obnoxious behaviour of the Israelis during their occupation of Sinai are echoed in the current Israeli war on Gaza.
On their social media accounts, residents of Sinai towns close to the border with Gaza have often said that they can hear the sounds of the Israeli strikes on Gaza and can feel the tremors caused by them.
According to Omran, it is not easy living on the border with Israel, especially with the Israeli wars on Gaza that have been recurrent since 2008. It is, he said, a reminder that Israel is an occupying power and of what Israel did to the people of Sinai during the years of occupation.
TODAY AND TOMORROW: “The experience of the Israeli occupation of Sinai was very harsh,” said Moataz Salama, editor of the Arab Strategic Report put out by Al-Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies.
He said that unlike the case of the colonial occupations carried out by France and Britain in the 19th and 20th centuries, the occupation of Sinai meant that it was cut off from the rest of the country in the middle of the 20th century.
The Israeli occupation of Sinai was also part of the larger story of the Palestinian Nakba, the Arab-Israeli wars prior to 1967, and of many other Israeli hostilities that Israel exercised against Egypt, the Palestinians, and the Arabs.
“All of this has given a particularly complex significance to Sinai,” Salama said.
According to Nourhan Medhat, a researcher at Ahwal Masriya (Egyptian Affairs), a periodical by Al-Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies, it is wrong to say that the majority of the younger Egyptian generations, those born after the Egyptian-Israeli wars in the past 25 years, have lost awareness of the significance of Sinai.
“It may differ from one person to the next, but it is surely there one way or another,” she said. She added that the current Israeli war on Gaza and the levels of tension it has brought is a firm reminder of why Sinai is essential to Egyptian national security.
Salama said that today it is hard to separate the positions of the state or the people of Egypt vis-à-vis the Israeli war on Gaza or the Israeli presence in the Philadelphi Corridor from the heritage of the Israeli occupation of Sinai that started in 1967 and only ended with the return of Taba.
Moreover, according to Ahmed Farouk, counsellor to the Egyptian Centre for Research and coordinator of the National Working Group Against the Displacement Plans, both NGOs, it is hard to think of Sinai today without reference to the plans that Israel is talking about with regard to expelling the Gazans into Sinai.
“Sinai is not just a very precious part of Egyptian territory but is also a defence frontline for Egypt against any possible aggression from the eastern border,” Farouk said. He added that today is a very sensitive moment, given the Israeli plans. This is the case despite the fact that the “Peace Treaty has been holding, and Egypt is strategically committed to peace.”
“Sinai is crucial to Egypt’s national security, and Egypt acts in line with this obvious fact,” Farouk stated. He argued that it is impossible to overlook the impact of the Israeli presence in the Philadelphi Corridor or the statements of Israeli officials on the displacement of Gazans into Sinai when analysing the political and other decisions that Egypt takes.
However, he added that whatever it does Egypt is acting in full commitment with the Peace Treaty. “Israel might claim otherwise in its propaganda campaign, but this does not change the facts on the ground,” he said.
According to Wael Rabei, a consultant to the Nasser Academy Research Centre in Cairo, all the security measures undertaken by the Egyptian authorities “since Egypt started its war on the Sinai-based terror groups and beyond are in line with the country’s contractual commitments.”
He added that any increase in Egypt’s military or security presence beyond the limitations imposed by the Peace Treaty are only conducted upon the consent of Israel through the committees that were established in the Peace Treaty framework.
The 1979 Egyptian-Israeli Peace Treaty designs three zones of security levels in Sinai and one level in Gaza, which was then under Israeli Occupation. Zones A, B, and C are in Sinai, while Zone D is in Gaza. Zones C and D are on the lines of the international borders between Egypt and Gaza and Egypt and Israel.
In Zone A that starts at the eastern borders of the Suez Canal up to the point of the Straits, Egypt is allowed a mechanised infantry division with a total of 22,000 troops and 230 tanks. In Zone B, from east of Arish to Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt is permitted four border security battalions that work in coordination with civilian police. In Zone C from Arish to the borders with the Palestinian Territories, only the multinational force and observers and civilian police are allowed.
In Zone D, on the Egyptian Israeli borders, Israel is permitted four infantry battalions and no tanks.
According to Rabei, Egypt has to consider its security concerns in view of the fact that today Israel has exceeded the allowed number of soldiers and forced its tanks into the Philadelphi Corridor, even if not right back to the borders with Egypt.
“Let us put things in black and white: Israel does have a plan to expel the Palestinians; Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich has started a division in the Israeli government to operate what he calls ‘voluntary’ displacement; Israel has been killing Palestinians and forcing them into hunger and fear,” he said.
“Obviously, and legitimately, Egypt needs to be on the alert.”
According to Farouk, the development schemes that the state has been involved in in Sinai over the past few years, and the building of bridges and tunnels to facilitate the connection between Sinai and the rest of the country, are part of plans to fortify the security of Sinai through the peninsula’s development.
* A version of this article appears in print in the 24 April, 2025 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
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