Cairo is planning to host a meeting of the Palestinian factions later this month in order to push for greater inter-Palestinian cohesion. The anticipated meeting comes against the backdrop of a groundbreaking agreement with Hamas and other Palestinian resistance movements to decommission their arms and put them under the supervision of a strictly Palestinian body in Gaza.
The agreement came after over six months of talks sponsored by Egypt in a bid to secure progress on the implementation of the US-sponsored peace plan for Gaza that both Hamas and Israel agreed to last autumn.
However, it took only a few days for Israel to throw cold water on the cautious optimism that prevailed after the announcement of the Hamas decision. On Monday, shortly after meetings between Board of Peace Envoy Nickolay Mladenov and Israeli officials including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the news broke that Israel is not set to commit to two core elements of the deal that US President Donald Trump announced on 30 July. On Tuesday, Netanyahu’s office said that a scheduled meeting to discuss the Gaza deal was postponed until 6 August.
The outcome of concerted negotiations conducted by Egypt and other Middle East mediators Qatar, Turkey, and the US, the new Gaza deal is designed to pick up the pieces of the Trump peace plan for Gaza that was approved by Hamas and Israel in October last year to end the two-year Israeli genocidal war on Gaza.
In essence, the new deal is set to move towards two key objectives: a staged Israeli withdrawal from Gaza; and a parallel decommissioning of arms by Hamas upon the cessation of Israeli hostilities. To achieve these objectives, the deal includes the entry of the International Stabilisation Force (ISF) and the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza into the Gaza Strip.
“It seems that the meeting did not go well and that Netanyahu told Mladenov that he was not set to move with the deal,” said an Egyptian source on Monday.
The outcome was not unexpected, as since the 30 July announcement and up until the time that Mladenov was in the meeting with Netanyahu, the Israeli occupation army had conducted heavy military attacks on Gaza, killing dozens of civilians. This is in addition to the over 1,000 civilian Palestinians it has killed in Gaza since the ceasefire went into effect in October last year.
Prior to his meeting with Mladenov, Netanyahu had received a firm rejection of the new Gaza deal from government allies Bezalel Smotrich and Orit Stock. Initially, Israel had responded more cautiously to it.
“This deal was drafted as a result of continuous consultations that Mladenov conducted with the Israelis,” the Egyptian official said. “Much of it was already included in a draft plan that was proposed by Mladenov, but we had to work on the draft to make it more balanced because it tilted too much in favour of Israel and it would have been impossible to endorse it or to get Hamas to agree to it,” he added.
The same source said that it was not clear whether the position convoyed to Mladenov in Israel on Monday would halt preparations for a meeting that was supposed to convene in Egypt to give the go-ahead to the deal, especially the early phase that relates to the entry of the ISF and the National Committee into Gaza.
“We are currently talking to the Americans, and our sense is that they will be trying to get the Israelis to move forward,” the source said.
He said that it would be “really troubling if things do not move forward because then we will be talking about further escalation in Gaza” at a time when there is already considerable escalation in the West Bank where Israeli settlers and the Israeli army are conducting attacks against Palestinians with the intention of pushing them out of their villages to create the space for more settlements.
Earlier this week, Egyptian Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty spoke with his Jordanian counterpart Ayman Al-Safadi on the situation in the West Bank. Statements made by the offices of both ministers expressed the concerns of Cairo and Amman over the possibility of escalation in the West Bank.
According to an Arab diplomat with insight into Israeli politics, with the overall political mood in Israel weighing heavily on the extremist side, it would be a mistake to expect anything other than escalation. This is particularly the case for Netanyahu, he said, since legislative elections are scheduled in Israel for 27 October.
“It is not an easy situation, but we have no other option but to engage and to push for containment because the alternative could be troubling both for Gaza and for the West Bank,” the official said. He spoke shortly after Abdelatty’s press statements that echoed concerns over possible wider regional tension and not just on the Palestinian front.
“Of course, we are worried about a much wider regional escalation,” he said. He added that a prime worry for Egypt relates to disturbing scenarios in the US war on Iran “and the attacks that Iran has been conducting against targets in the Arab Gulf countries”.
“Our position is clear: we want the war to stop through a political settlement that all sides will stick to, and we want Iran to immediately stop sending messages to the US via the attacks on its Arab neighbours,” the official said.
In a press statement issued this week, Presidential Spokesman Mohamed Al-Shennawi said that during a phone call with Emir of Kuwait Meshaal Al-Sabah, President Abdel-Fattah Al-Sisi had expressed Egypt’s full solidarity with Kuwait in the face of the Iranian attacks. He also called for a political settlement to end the war and to spare the region from further escalation.
The source declined to comment on speculation about Iranian involvement in a drone attack against a US-owned floating storage and regasification vessel, Energos Winter, sparking a blaze that spread to a Greek-owned liquefied natural gas (LNG) tanker, GasLog Salem, in Damietta last Wednesday.
He did not comment on whether this attack should be perceived as a foretaste of the all-out war that Tehran could be set to undertake should the US escalate its strikes on Iran. “I will just say one thing: if we don’t reach a political settlement on this war, the consequences will be very unsettling for the region,” he said.
He added that Egypt has strongly encouraged the work done by both Pakistan and Qatar to build the foundations for a path of de-escalation against the backdrop of US threats to conduct heavy strikes against Iran.
“We are hopeful that the current diplomatic intervention will take things back to the re-operation of the ceasefire” that was announced in June to end the war that was started in late February by the US and Israel against Iran.
According to another Egyptian official, Egypt is mindful of a possible move on the part of the Houthis, Iran’s allies in Yemen, to close the Bab Al-Mandab Strait, which is vital for ships wanting to enter the Suez Canal.
He said that Egypt is keeping a close watch on the situation and is keeping all channels of communication open to avert a crisis there that would not only influence traffic into the Suez Canal but would also be problematic for Red Sea security.
Last week, Saudi Arabia announced the launch of a new multinational maritime defence alliance to protect shipping lanes in the region, starting with key members such as Egypt, Turkey, and Pakistan.
Riyadh, which will host and chair the new coalition, said that the alliance aims to secure the Red Sea, the Bab Al-Mandab Strait, and the Gulf of Aden from various threats.
“There is a concern over possible Houthi interventions, but it is not just the Houthis we are worried about because we are well aware of other attempts to tamper with Red Sea security to the disadvantage of the strategic interests of the countries overlooking it,” the official said.
He declined to comment on whether this new alliance is set to replace or duplicate the Red Sea Forum that was proposed jointly by Egypt and Saudi Arabia and was established in January 2020.
However, the second source said that while the forum has a wider scope of cooperation, the new alliance is more strictly focused on Red Sea security.
He added that central to the agenda of the new alliance is the implementation of a core principle that both Egypt and Saudi Arabia subscribe to — that Red Sea security is the concern of the countries overlooking the Red Sea.
“In other words, we are not willing to allow the interventions of other countries,” the official stated.
Egypt has been particularly opposed to attempts by Ethiopia to impose its presence in the Red Sea through Somaliland, and it has underlined its commitment to support the territorial integrity of Somalia.
“We are monitoring attempts to force a de facto break in Sudan, and we stand firmly against this scenario,” the second source said. He added that Egypt is also mindful of “attempts that Ethiopia is involved in, along with [other countries in the region], to control the Red Sea and the Nile Basin, and we are acting against these attempts.”
This week, Abdelatty conducted consultations with his Sudanese counterpart Moheiddine Salem and with President of Somalia Hassan Al-Sheikh Mahmoud. He also met with officials from other key Red Sea and Nile Basin countries such as Uganda, Kenya, Burundi, and Djibouti.
* A version of this article appears in print in the 6 August, 2026 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
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