Egypt’s Puzzling Role in the Israel-Hamas War

The country that once controlled the Gaza Strip is helping Palestinians — but only up to a point.

Since long before the Israel-Hamas war, the role of Egypt in Gaza’s plight has often appeared opaque. It controlled the bordering territory almost continuously from 1949 to 1967, in the aftermath of 1948’s Arab-Israeli War. Israel then wrested it back during the Six-Day War, and a landmark peace treaty with Israel in 1978 fundamentally changed Egypt’s posture toward its onetime territory. Now, under its autocratic president, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, Egypt remains both instrumental to the West’s humanitarian efforts around Gaza and wary of being too friendly toward Israel or its allies. To understand how Egypt is thinking about the new war next door, I spoke with Steven Cook, a columnist at Foreign Policy, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, and an author of several books on the Middle East.

During the Israel-Hamas war so far, the Egyptian government has helped provide quite a bit of humanitarian aid to Gaza residents through the Rafah Crossing. It has railed against Israel, and it has refused to condemn Hamas. But the government hasn’t actually let any Palestinians come out of Gaza and into the Sinai Peninsula. I may be missing something, but I don’t think Egypt’s refusal to do so has stirred much international outrage. Can you explain what Sisi is thinking with these moves, and how it has avoided significant backlash?
Let’s also be clear that they have started accepting grievously wounded Palestinians who are being treated in field hospitals there.

I think that the Egyptian position on this is a principal position, which is that if they start allowing Palestinians into the Sinai Peninsula, the Israelis will push Palestinians there. From the Egyptian perspective, that would relieve the Israelis of their responsibilities as the occupying power in Gaza. It also fuels fears that the Israelis want to throw Gaza and its security problems into the Egyptians’ lap. And, from the Egyptian perspective, allowing large numbers of Palestinians in the Sinai Peninsula would basically be helping to enable ethnic cleansing. So that’s the point that they have been making to various international interlocutors. And they have not been willing to bend on this, except on this question of wounded Palestinians.

And this is not completely crazy for the Egyptians, because Israelis have in the past spoken about an Arab solution for Gaza, and that raises all kinds of alarm bells in Cairo about Israeli intentions to essentially by default render the Egyptians responsible for the Gaza Strip.

Could the U.S. exert any pressure on this point of admitting any Palestinians? Or is that just a complete dead end?
If you go back to 1990, 1991, the United States forgave a significant amount of Egyptian debt, and got the Paris Club and the Arab countries to forgive significant amounts of Egyptian debt, as sort of a thank-you for deploying 35,000 Egyptian soldiers to Saudi Arabia during Operations Desert Storm and Shield. And so there’s been some thinking recently, of “Well, what do the Egyptians need? They need debt relief. Perhaps we can do some sort of deal.” But it strikes me as a nonstarter for the issues that I just pointed out. The Egyptians just don’t want to do this, and in fact have upped their rhetoric and said they would see any effort to push Palestinians into the Sinai Peninsula as an act of war. That’s going to get everyone who’s talking about maybe paying them to take Palestinians to back off, because no one wants to see the Egypt-Israel peace treaty under threat.

Nobody meaning the governments in the region — not so much the citizens. They’d probably be fine with that.
Right. The governments.

Along with Israel, Egypt has been blockading Gaza since 2007. Are the reasons behind that similar to the reasons you listed for why they don’t want to admit Palestinians? It strikes me that their role in the blockade is often treated as a footnote compared to Israel’s.
Partly, but also remember — Hamas was a carve-out of the Muslim Brotherhood in 1987. The Egyptians have this extremely complicated relationship with the Brotherhood, and that was intensified obviously after Abdel al-Sisi’s coup in 2013. And the Egyptians have maintained that Hamas and extremists in the Sinai — they’ve been battling the Sinai province of the Islamic states since around 2011 — that there is coordination there. And so this would be inviting more Hamas people into the Sinai Peninsula that would do damage to them.

So there is a significant security component to the Egyptian objections to welcoming large numbers of Palestinians. And it’s something I think makes sense, strictly from a security perspective —  they want to keep an eye on everything that comes in and out of the Gaza Strip.

In 2008, when there was a round of violence between Israelis and Hamas and the Egyptians weren’t letting anybody out, someone blew a hole in the border wall that the Egyptians had constructed, and lots of Palestinians went running through that wall, and the Egyptians freaked out. Not only did they freak out because someone had blown a hole through the wall but because the Israelis started talking about “Well, there really should be an Arab solution to the Gaza Strip and whatever.” So it’s a security thing, and they have a real issue there.

But they have played a role in the immiseration of the Palestinians. And you’re right, it’s often a footnote. Every time I write about it, I make sure that I am clear that the Egyptians are a full partner with the Israelis in the blockade.

There is already plenty of smuggling going on from Egypt to Gaza.
Yeah. The Egyptians have periodically tried to get control over these smuggling tunnels under pressure from the United States, under pressure from Israel, and has flooded those tunnels. And then there’s been legalized trade, and humanitarian aid that comes in through stuff purchased in Egypt. Hamas uses it to make money and obviously to build out this underground tunnel network known as “the Metro.”

It should also be noted that Egypt is limited in how much force they can have in the Sinai by their treaty with the Israelis. They do have military units in the Sinai. But the amount of force and where they are is really subject to the approval of the Israeli government.

You mentioned Egypt’s history with Hamas. Do you think the current Egyptian government is thinking about the group now as a total enemy or as a kind of frenemy?
The Palestine Muslim Brothers actually created Hamas, because what was happening in the late 1980s was that Islamic Jihad was engaging in terrorism against Israelis, and their popularity was increasing at the expense of the Palestine branch of the Muslim Brotherhood. And the Palestine branch said, “We’ve got to do something about this.” And they created Hamas, and in time, Hamas eclipsed the brotherhood and basically is the Brotherhood in Palestine now.

At moments of great violence, Egyptian intelligence knocks the heads of Hamas and tries to get them to agree to cease-fires and so on and so forth and basically has the place wired because they were concerned about connections between Hamas and extremists in the Sinai. At the same time, there have been unofficial Hamas offices in Cairo. So like I said, it’s a deeply conflicted and complex thing. But, of course, the Egyptian leadership has no love for the Muslim Brotherhood, and Hamas is the Muslim Brotherhood. So at the least, it’s a competitive type of thing. But I think the Egyptians are useful to the United States and Israel in that they maintain this relationship with Hamas and that facilitates negotiations or head knocking in order to get cease-fires.

I will tell you that in 2014, during the 49-day conflict between Israel and Hamas, it was the Egyptians who were telling the Israelis to destroy Hamas. That gives you a sense of the complexity and the way in which this outright hostility ebbs and flows between the Egyptian government and Hamas.

I want to talk a little bit about the domestic situation in Egypt. The peak moment of mainstream attention here was 2011, with the Arab Spring and the overthrow of Mubarak, then Mohamed Morsi winning elections. He was basically deposed in a coup by Sisi, who has become more and more authoritarian over time. Now, the country is in an economic crisis, right?
It’s in basically a debt spiral. Egypt is one of the most indebted countries in the world. Sisi, after coming to power in July of 2013, needed to demonstrate that Egypt was moving in the right direction on what he had promised Egyptians, which was prosperity, and that they were getting security too. And part of this was to demonstrate physically tangible benefits of the overthrow of the Muslim Brotherhood. So they built a bypass to the Suez Canal, and they did it in ten months with billions and billions of dollars spent. They’re building a new administrative capital. They’re building a summer capital along the North Coast called New Alamein, and all kinds of cities and projects, some of which have been good — bridges, highway overpasses, interchanges.

When I lived in Cairo, to get on the Ring Road, you had to go to a certain part of Cairo and then back onto the highway. Those things have been fixed. But these are massive projects. The first phase of the new administrative capital has cost almost $60 billion, and it’s not even really done. And so what’s happening is it’s kind of this mass crony capitalism where the military and military-favored governments are making huge money off of this. The government is saying, “Oh, it’s not costing the Treasury any money,” which is just a lie. The country is indebted. The only way to pay bills is to borrow more money. This has put tremendous pressure on the pound, which has been devalued. So the government has pushed up presidential elections three times. They know they have to do another devaluation, but they don’t want to have an explosion before the presidential election. So they’re happening in December rather than the first quarter of 2024. As soon as those elections are over, expect another devaluation.

Not like the elections are competitive anyway.
Right. But there’s a real potential for an explosion. In January 1977, they just discussed the possibility of lifting some food subsidies, and it was a regime-shaking mass protest. Egyptians are confronting record inflation. People who are solidly middle class or upper-middle class are now finding themselves considerably poorer. And then, of course, most of the country is poor.

How does this all influence Egypt’s posture toward the Israel-Hamas war? Do you think Sisi sees possible domestic benefits there or is mostly downside?
I’m somewhat skeptical that the war in Gaza will cause an uprising immediately. But as I pointed out in one of these pieces, many of the people involved in the uprising emerged out of the Palestine solidarity movements of the Second Intifada. The fact that the peace treaty with Israelis is seen as a separate peace, and almost a shameful piece for many, does create political problems for Sisi.

So he has done some things that are pretty interesting. He did authorize pro-Palestine protests, which is risky because they could turn into anti-Sisi protests. I think the Egyptians, after initially not being as involved, are deeply involved in negotiations with Hamas and the Qataris on hostages. So I think Sisi wants to make himself, and Egyptians want to make themselves, useful. They always say you always have to come back to Egypt if you want to deal with Gaza.

And as you pointed it out, Sisi has been extremely critical of the Israeli government. They have been touting how much aid that they’re collecting on the border and providing assistance to the Palestinians, and I’m sure they’re going to make a huge deal of it. And then trying to make himself useful to Washington in this area.

The question will be: If he makes himself useful, what will that mean in terms of the aid relationship with the United States? Right before this happened, you had the whole thing with Senator Menendez and the revelation that the Egyptians were essentially using him as an intelligence asset, and you had this new chairman who said, “We can’t go forward with the current aid package as it is. We should withhold the $285 million that we were going to release to them.” If they make themselves useful, are they going to get that aid?

Earlier, you mentioned this idea that has bubbled up before and is bubbling up again now — that Arab countries could band together to govern Gaza. I spoke to Ehud Barak last week. He thought highly of the idea, which he said had come up as an option in the 2000s. Do you think there’s any chance it happens?
The Israelis are of the region, but they’re not in the region. So they cook up these ideas and it sounds good to them. The only other people who think it’s a good idea are in Washington. Everybody else thinks it’s a really bad idea.

The problem is that all the other ideas are also very bad.
Right, exactly.

Something’s going to have to happen, so …
Why not this? I think why not this primarily because as bad as some of the other ideas are, this one’s really a nonstarter. I don’t know who you would find. The Saudis have a long history of promising to help the Palestinians and a much shorter history of actually helping them. Why would they commit their own troops? They can barely protect Saudi Arabia. The Emiratis are very unlikely to do it. The Qataris — no. Really the only two Arab states that have this kind of capability are the Jordanians and the Egyptians, and they have the most at stake here and the most to lose. We don’t know how this will end up — it could be a Hamas insurgency.

I’ve got a book coming out, and the big theme is how to be in the Middle East in a constructive way while controlling our transformational and fantastical impulses. It seems to me we have to set our sights a little bit lower and think about what a Palestinian solution would look like, where would a Palestinian solution come from when it comes to Gaza. I’m not saying we should rebuild the Palestinian Authority and support Abbas. I think that that is something that we could have done — we could have done it 15 or 20 years ago, and the Egyptians were pleading with Washington in the early 2000s after Arafat died: “You have to support Abbas. You have to make him a real leader.” And everybody just basically ignored them and watched the Israelis undermine the PA over time. I don’t know what it looks like, but the solution has to be a Palestinian one for it to work and for it to be legitimate. I just don’t see how the international community, such as it is, can engineer some sort of Mandate for Palestine 2.0 and have anybody accept it.

Then they all have a campfire and sing “Kumbaya.”
I’m the hanging judge on these issues. I’m sorry. I mean, I used to be a really hopeful person … Despite my sunny disposition, I’m deeply cynical about all of this.

I think it’s hard not to be. The only thing I’ve seen is there’s some glimmers of — well, maybe the two-state solution could make a comeback after whatever shakes out.
The problem is that the Israelis are so angry and wounded. It’s like Hamas dug up the peace camp and then buried it another six feet under. So I don’t know.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.