This nearly 20-month war has become so senseless and so extreme in its brutality and its horrific human losses that nearly no one in the world, except for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his extremist government, has not demanded its immediate cessation as it has violated all international laws and conventions and been responsible for systematic war crimes.
In the words of UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, “the situation for Palestinians in Gaza is beyond description, beyond atrocious, and beyond inhumane. A policy of siege and starvation makes a mockery of international law. The blockade against humanitarian aid must end immediately.”
Al-Sisi’s speech in Baghdad attracted particular attention as it came from the leader of a country that was the first to sign a peace agreement with Israel, leading to a historic shift in the approach to the Arab-Israeli conflict since the creation of the Jewish state in 1948. Since signing the Camp David Accords with US mediation in 1979, Egypt’s official policy has been to promote peace in this volatile region based on compromise but also adherence to international law and UN Security Council Resolutions that oblige Israel to withdraw from all the Arab territories it occupied following the 1967 War, including Occupied East Jerusalem, and to allow the creation of an independent Palestinian state.
It was no coincidence that President Al-Sisi recalled those facts in his recent speech, while also calling upon US President Donald Trump to play a mediating role to end the conflict between Palestine and Israel similar to the one the US performed in 1979 to reach the historic accords between Egypt and Israel. He confirmed his trust in Trump’s intention to become a peacemaker, and he praised the statements Trump made during his recent tour of the Arab Gulf countries, namely that he wants to use his second term in order to end wars and bring peace in a way that would benefit both the US and the regional interest.
Al-Sisi thanked the US President for working hard to reach a ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas a day before he took over the presidency. However, that achievement was short lived, and Netanyahu soon breached the agreement mediated by US Middle East Envoy Steve Witkoff and decided to go back to the systematic policy of bombings and massacres against the Palestinians. For domestic reasons and to keep his extremist coalition government in office, Netanyahu claimed that what he had failed to achieve over 19 months of war would be reached through an expanded military operation that included more barbaric killings of innocent Palestinian civilians, topped by women and children. Over the past week, no fewer than 100 Palestinians have been killed each day on average.
In his speech in Baghdad, Al-Sisi was clearly aware of the true Israeli intentions behind igniting a new round of fighting: the forced displacement of the Palestinian people and the liquidation of the Palestinian cause. “For over a year and a half, the Palestinian people have been subjected to systematic atrocities and unspeakable violence aimed at their obliteration and the annihilation of their presence in the Gaza Strip. The Strip has endured widespread devastation that has made it unconducive to life as part of a deliberate endeavour to forcibly displace its inhabitants under the untold horrors of war,” Al-Sisi said.
However, Egypt’s justified rejection of the Israeli atrocities against the Palestinians in Gaza has not deterred it from continuing to coordinate with key mediators Qatar and the United States to bring Netanyahu to accept a new ceasefire agreement with the clear understanding that this will be the first step towards a permanent end of the war and not a repetition of the recently violated ceasefire agreement that lasted for just two months.
In this framework, Egypt, along with Qatar, pressed hard for the release of American-Israeli prisoner Edan Alexander, who was held by Hamas after serving at an Israeli army military base near Gaza. This goodwill gesture by Hamas was the key reason why Israel finally announced on Monday that it would allow limited amounts of humanitarian aid into Gaza while continuing a relentless military campaign clearly aimed to put pressure on Hamas to accept the Israeli conditions for an agreement.
Netanyahu did not help to move forward the ongoing negotiations in Doha by announcing in advance that he would only accept a partial deal to ensure the return of more Israeli prisoners, after which he would immediately resume the war in order to achieve the illusion of the “total defeat” of Hamas. Even when he said he was ready to consider “a framework to end the war,” that was conditional on Hamas accepting to totally disarm and to send its leaders and fighters into exile, a non-starter for the Palestinian group and a declaration that the Israeli genocidal war will go on forever.
Facing up to such familiar Netanyahu manoeuvering tactics, which are aimed at avoiding taking decisions and dragging the war on to serve his own domestic agenda, the part of President Al-Sisi’s speech that won most praise came when he stated the bare truth about the consequences of allowing the Israeli war to go on endlessly or for it to carry out its goal of forcibly displacing the Palestinian people.
Netanyahu might mistakenly think that with US backing he will be able to go ahead with his plan to reoccupy Gaza and displace its people, while at the same time continuing to normalise relations with the Arab countries under his defunct formula of “peace for peace” and not “land for peace” that was the basis for all agreements signed between Israel and the other Arab countries, Al-Sisi said.
Aware of such intentions, Al-Sisi stated, “I reiterate with absolute conviction that even if Israel succeeds in forging normalisation agreements with all the Arab states, a durable, just, and comprehensive peace in the Middle East will remain fundamentally unattainable without the establishment of a Palestinian state in accordance with the resolutions of international legitimacy.”
This is the core truth of which all the parties involved in the Middle East peace process are fully aware. It is only Netanyahu and his extremist cabinet who are fighting this reality, turning their country into a pariah state and its political and military leaders into wanted war criminals.
* A version of this article appears in print in the 22 May, 2025 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
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