Many of Israel’s actions since it launched its war against Gaza in October 2023 have indicated an intention to provoke a crisis with Egypt. This would be consistent with the ongoing pattern of Israeli military aggression against several other countries in the region.
In his address to the Emergency Arab and Islamic Summit that convened in Qatar last week in response to the Israeli missile strikes against Doha, President Abdel-Fattah Al-Sisi warned of the consequences of Israel’s “unchecked recklessness and increasingly inflated arrogance” for peace and security in the region.
He stressed that this belligerent behaviour “erodes opportunities for any new peace agreements and even aborts existing peace accords with the nations of the region. The consequences will be severe, dragging the region back into an atmosphere of conflict and squandering the historic efforts to build peace and the gains they have yielded.”
The Egyptian president addressed these words to the Israeli people in an attempt to alert them to the dangerous folly of their leadership. His warning was based on repeated official statements by Israeli government figures and numerous reports in the Israeli media indicating that Israel insists on pursuing policies inimical to Egypt’s national security and that call into question Tel Aviv’s continued commitment to the 1979 Peace Treaty with Egypt.
Many people in Israel are being led to believe that their country no longer needs the peace treaty with Egypt because Israel’s geostrategic position two years after the start of the war on 7 October 2023 is “far better” than it was before. They boast that Israel has proven its ability to manage wars on multiple fronts and to penetrate the air defences of some regional states so effectively as to be able to fully control their airspace.
Israeli officials and the Israeli media have also made it clear that Israel remains bent on its ethnic-cleansing programme in Gaza. They have made no secret of their plans to expel hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, currently being pressed into deadly concentration camps, to Egypt, Jordan, or elsewhere.
Egypt has repeatedly stressed its condemnation of this inhumane project, regardless of how it is euphemistically packaged by Washington and Tel Aviv as a “Middle East Riviera” or a “Humanitarian City” plan. There is no disguising the abhorrent nature of this scheme, which, as President Al-Sisi has repeatedly stated, aims to liquidate the Palestinian cause and to endanger Egypt’s national security and sovereignty by forcing Palestinians across the Gaza border into Sinai.
Some of Israel’s actions betray no small degree of malice against Egypt. Israel has sponsored slanderous media campaigns that blame Cairo for the failure to deliver aid through the Rafah Crossing with Gaza. It engages in such brazen deception, moreover, as the entire world watches Israel close its crossings and prevent most of the vital aid from the Egyptian side from reaching its intended recipients in Gaza.
The UN has been explicit in saying that a manmade famine is unfolding in Gaza and that Israel is fully responsible for it. But this has not deterred Israel from organising a demonstration outside the Egyptian Embassy in Tel Aviv, where protesters chanted slogans demanding that Egypt open the Rafah Crossing.
This “Tel Aviv Muslim Brothers” protest received considerable media coverage. More significantly, it calls into question Israel’s commitment to its obligation to secure the Egyptian Embassy in Tel Aviv. Many already doubt that the level of security that Israel provides to the Egyptian Embassy there comes close to matching the level of security the Egyptian government provides to the Israeli Embassy in Cairo.
Given the looming mass expulsion scheme in Gaza, it is not surprising to hear voices in Israel criticising Egypt’s development projects in Sinai, claiming that they pose a threat to Israel’s security. However, anyone who has been following developments in Egypt will know that these projects were announced many years ago and that they constitute one prong of the government’s counterterrorism drive, dismantling the environment that once bred terrorist elements in North Sinai.
Nothing in this human development project conflicts with the terms of Egypt’s Peace Treaty with Israel or the agreed-upon arrangements with the Multinational Force and Observers (MFO), the body tasked with monitoring compliance with the treaty by both Egypt and Israel.
It is obvious what Israel is up to. It is trying to build up the pressure in response to Egypt’s unwavering rejection of the forced expulsion of the people of Gaza – a fanatical project being pushed by the far-right government in Israel and that has met with no resistance from the US Trump administration, which appears willing to indulge the fanatical whims of Israeli extremists.
Egypt has every right, as a sovereign nation, to take whatever measures it deems necessary to protect its national interests against Israel’s threats. Nor are there any provisions in the peace treaty or its protocols that would prevent it from doing so.
Egypt has consistently facilitated the work of the MFO in carrying out its inspection missions to ensure compliance with the security arrangements stipulated in the treaty. Any attempts to undermine these arrangements would clearly come from Israel.
The writer is an expert on security policies in the MENA region.
* A version of this article appears in print in the 25 September, 2025 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
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