What Does Egypt Think of Gaza?
The world’s focus is on Gaza. Passionate debate on what Hamas, Israel and the United States will do fills news cycles around the world. But in the international debate, one key player is often absent from the discussion: Gaza’s neighbor to the south, Egypt.
Where does Egypt stand on Israel’s war? What is its vision of a postwar Gaza? Does the view of Egypt’s leadership match that of the Egyptian public? The answers to these questions have more serious consequences for world geopolitics than most realize.
The Egyptian Government
Egypt has been training Palestinian security personnel for several months to replace Hamas in Gaza, the Middle East Eye (mee) reported August 12. “Diplomatic and security sources” told mee that “Egypt has been training young people from Gaza or who hail from the enclave, some residing and educated in Egypt, others who fled to Cairo after the war began, and others residing in the West Bank whose families originally came from the Gaza Strip, to carry out security administration, take on police duties, and later govern the Gaza Strip.” This has apparently been going on since just after the war started in late 2023.
In other words, after Oct. 7, 2023, Egypt immediately began creating an alternative government to Hamas. Egypt has been crafting a day-after plan for Israel. It is supporting Israel’s war goals and future occupation effort.
There are other indications of this. Egypt and Israel had an economic blockade of Gaza before October 7, and Egypt still cooperates with Israel’s new control over Gaza’s borders. No shipments, humanitarian or otherwise, can enter Gaza from Egypt without permission from Israel’s authorities.
Egypt has also restricted who it allows out of Gaza, refusing to open its borders for Gazan refugees. With Israel restarting its invasion of Gaza City, Egypt has mobilized 40,000 soldiers to North Sinai. A “senior military source” told mee that “Egypt’s army is on the highest state of alert we’ve seen in years.” This is apparently to prevent Israel from sending any meaningful population of Palestinians across the border to Egypt. Yet when Iran sent missile volleys into Israel in June, the Egyptian government facilitated Israelis escaping into Egypt.
The Egyptian government has also cracked down on protests at home. Egypt is a military dictatorship and has heavy censorship in normal times, but it has increased its repression of pro-Palestinian demonstrations. Crackdowns and plainclothes enforcers are routine. The government responded to two international convoys in March and June with arrests and deportations. Egypt has been harder on its own people voicing support for Gaza than Israel has been on protesting Israelis.
Even as much of the world accuses Israel of a Gazan “genocide,” Egypt is happy to keep sending Israel money. Israel is expected to finalize a $35 billion deal where it would sell 130 billion cubic meters of gas to Egypt until 2040.
If one believes Israel is committing genocide, then Egypt is bankrolling it by the billions.
The Egyptian People
The Washington Institute for Near East Policy conducted a poll in November and December 2023, immediately after Hamas’s October 7 massacre. The results suggested 75 percent of Egyptians had a positive opinion of Hamas; 41 percent of respondents said “very positive.”
This is not about the people of Gaza. The question was specifically about Hamas, which was running Gaza as a totalitarian, Islamofascist dictatorship. This suggests the vast majority of Egypt’s approximately 111 million people endorse Hamas’s October 7 massacre—the murder of children and the mutilation of civilians, attacking Jews because they are Jews. There hasn’t been much polling on the subject since, probably because of Egypt’s censorship regime. But the poll took place at the height of Hamas’s power. This was before Gaza’s cities became rubble-filled shells of their former selves, before the international community claimed Israel was engineering a man-made famine, before Hamas became a “martyr.” One can presume attitudes have only hardened since then.
Contrast this with how the Egyptian government has supported Israel. Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi looks like a collaborator in Israel’s conquest of Gaza. To many a Gaza supporter, Sisi’s government is an accomplice to “the enemy.”
Why is there such a divide between Egypt’s government and its people?
Egypt is not a democracy. Its government has been a military dictatorship since the 1950s. The government has not been accountable to the people for decades.
Egypt was also the first Arab state to sign a peace treaty with Israel in 1978. Relations between Egyptians and Israelis on the ground have always been frosty. But Israel and Egypt maintain robust intergovernmental dialogue. Before the current war started, Israelis regularly vacationed in the Sinai. Israel helped Egypt quash an Islamic State insurgency.
Egypt’s government gains a lot of benefits from its relationship with Israel. But those benefits do not translate into favor with the Egyptian public.
This is not the only problem Egyptians have with their government right now. The economy is weak, battered by never-ending crises. This is compounded by the military regime prioritizing construction of vanity projects like a new capital city in the Sahara Desert. The Trumpet covered these economic woes extensively last year.
The economy hasn’t seen much improvement since then. At least a third of Egypt’s population is under the poverty line. Inflation has been in the double digits for over three years. And earlier this month, Sisi ratified legislation that removed government rent control that has been in place since Egypt was a British protectorate over a century ago. Public advocates told the New York Times this would “leave about 1.6 million households at risk of homelessness at a time when Egyptians have already been battered by repeated economic crises. … Subsidies for bread, electricity and gas are gone or going. Free public education and health care have deteriorated.”
Egypt’s population already had plenty of reasons not to support Sisi’s government. Now they can add aiding and abetting Israel to that list.
Egypt had a revolution against an unpopular sovereign in 2011. Will there be another?
The Egyptian Revolution?
The Trumpet forecasts massive changes for Egypt because of a prophecy in Daniel 11. Verse 40 describes an end-time clash between “the king of the north” and “the king of the south.” Biblical and secular history show the king of the north to be a unified European power. Trumpet editor in chief Gerald Flurry has identified the king of the south as a radical Islamist bloc led by Iran—Hamas’s paymaster. His free booklet The King of the South elaborates.
The rest of Daniel 11 shows Iran won’t be alone in its war. Verses 42-43 describe other countries the king of the north conquers: “He [the king of the north] shall stretch forth his hand also upon the countries: and the land of Egypt shall not escape. But he shall have power over the treasures of gold and of silver, and over all the precious things of Egypt: and the Libyans and the Ethiopians shall be at his steps.”
“Egypt will be conquered or controlled by the king of the north,” Mr. Flurry writes in The King of the South. “This clearly implies that Egypt will be allied with the king of the south. This prophecy indicates we are about to see a far-reaching change in Egyptian politics! We have been saying since 1994 that this would occur. Look at Egypt today, and you see the nation’s foreign policy and political orientation changing in a way that threatens to transform the entire region!”
The Egyptian government’s support of Israel adds fuel to a smoldering fire. Keep watching how Egypt reacts to what’s happening in Gaza. And watch for Egypt, like Hamas, to become a proxy of Iran.
To learn more, request a free copy of The King of the South.