Egypt-Israel ties in jeopardy over intensifying Gaza border dispute

“The Philadelphi Corridor — or, to put it more correctly, the southern stoppage point [of Gaza] — must be in our hands. It must be shut,” Netanyahu said in late December, referring to a buffer road along the border. “It is clear that any other arrangement would not ensure the demilitarization that we seek.”

Before Oct. 7, Egyptian and Hamas border authorities each managed their respective sides of the Rafah crossing, which sits along the Philadelphi Corridor, a no man’s land approximately nine miles long and several hundred yards wide that stretches from the southernmost tip of Gaza to the Mediterranean Sea. Israel hasn’t had boots on the ground along the border since 2005, when the country withdrew its forces from the Gaza Strip.

Reestablishing Israeli control over the area will be crucial to creating “a new strategic situation in Gaza” in which Hamas is unable to attack Israel again, according to Michael Milshtein, a senior fellow at Reichman University and a former head of Palestinian affairs for Israeli military intelligence.

Israel’s war in Gaza — launched after militants killed 1,200 people and took more than 250 hostage on Oct. 7 — has leveled much of the north and killed more than 26,000 Palestinians, many of them women and children, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.

The military campaign has damaged Hamas, but the group is still believed to command thousands of fighters. Its top leaders remain at large and much of its tunnel network, especially in the south, is intact, Israeli officials say.

As some Israeli troops leave Gaza, a long-term strategy remains elusive

“You must take control over this corridor, including Rafah border crossing,” Milshtein said. “Otherwise, it means that if there will be a cease-fire or even a broader settlement in Gaza, and the whole border will still be open, Hamas will very quickly get everything this organization needs from the military point of view” and reconstitute itself.

But the idea of Israeli troops returning to the border has set off alarm bells in Cairo, which said in recent weeks that such a move would risk undermining the 1979 Egypt-Israel peace treaty — a landmark accord that led to a half-century of coexistence and cooperation between the once-bitter foes.

Egypt has made clear that it considers the border a red line.

“It must be strictly emphasized that any Israeli move in this direction will lead to a serious threat to Egyptian-Israeli relations,” Diaa Rashwan, head of the State Information Service, said in a statement last week.

Egyptian and Israeli officials and commentators have traded accusations this month over who is to blame for the smuggling of weapons to Hamas in Gaza, revealing growing fissures in a relationship that has been a bedrock of stability in a volatile region.

“There is lack of trust or lack of understanding from both sides, which we are not used to,” said a former member of Egypt’s parliament, Mohamed Anwar Sadat, the nephew of Anwar Sadat, the Egyptian president who signed the 1979 treaty and was later assassinated. “Honestly, we believe we are back to square one when it comes to our relationship with Israel — back to the ’70s.”

Egypt has long advocated for Palestinian self-determination while serving as a key interlocutor between Israel and Palestinian authorities. Relations between Israel and Egypt were never warm, but the two countries had developed a close security partnership in recent years and were pursuing deeper economic and energy ties.

Since President Abdel Fatah El-Sisi took power after a military coup in 2013, Egypt has destroyed hundreds of tunnels used to smuggle weapons and goods to and from Gaza. The government also displaced tens of thousands of northern Sinai residents and razed buildings near the border to create a militarized buffer zone about three miles deep.

Israel, meanwhile, let Egypt send military forces to Sinai to fight an Islamist insurgency, beyond what the 1979 treaty allowed.

Security cooperation “was excellent — until the 7th of October,” said Samir Farag, a former Egyptian general and defense official.

The suggestion from Israel that Egypt has failed to adequately crack down on smuggling has touched a nerve among Egyptian officials, for whom security is paramount. From Cairo’s perspective, Sisi has already taken on significant political risk by shoring up Israel’s blockade of Gaza, even as more than a million displaced Palestinians seek safety in Rafah.

“Egypt is fully controlling its borders,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Ahmed Abu Zeid said on a recent talk show.

Rashwan, the state information head, laid out a lengthy defense of Egypt’s efforts to crack down on smuggling — pointing, among other measures, to a 20-foot-deep concrete wall Egypt constructed along the border in recent years. And he lashed out at suggestions from Israel that militants are co-opting humanitarian deliveries for their own purposes.

“Any claim that smuggling operations are carried out through trucks carrying aid and goods to Gaza from the Egyptian side of the Rafah crossing is an empty and ridiculous statement,” he said.

Egypt under growing pressure as displaced Gazans crowd the border

Tensions between the countries were already high after calls by right-wing Israeli lawmakers for the displacement of Gazans into Sinai, a nightmare scenario for Egypt. The war in Gaza has also dealt another blow to Egypt’s struggling economy: Tourism revenue is down, and income from shipping through the Suez Canal dropped after Houthi militants in Yemen began attacking merchant vessels in the Red Sea to protest the war.

“The strain being imposed on Egypt right now is just extraordinary,” said Mirette Mabrouk, director of the Egypt studies program at the Washington-based Middle East Institute. “The security of Egypt is tantamount to the security of Israel, so when you continue to attempt to destabilize Egypt, or if you proceed in a manner that is very likely to destabilize Egypt, it is not in your interest.”

Farag, the former general, said Egypt was considering a range of options to respond if Israeli forces seize the border area, but declined to elaborate.

Netanyahu said in a news conference Saturday that relations with Egypt were “ongoing and normal” after reports that Cairo had considered recalling its ambassador from Tel Aviv.

Israel’s military would only undertake a ground operation along the Philadelphi Corridor with the consent of Egyptian officials, the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth reported this week.

Preserving its relationship with Cairo is “a very, very important consideration from the Israeli point of view,” Milshtein said.

Israeli troops along the border would be likely to become targets for Hamas or allied militants, bringing the violence right to Egypt’s doorstep and standing in the way of a durable peace, said a former Arab diplomat familiar with Cairo’s concerns, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive issue.

Israel’s seizure of the border crossing would also sever Egypt’s geographic link to Gaza, potentially undercutting Egypt’s leverage with Hamas and weakening its role as a mediator between Israeli and Palestinian authorities, the diplomat added. Egypt, along with Qatar and the United States, continues to play a key role in negotiations between Israel and Hamas over a potential cease-fire and the release of Israeli hostages.

The “very presence” of the Israeli military in Gaza “is likely to remain a source of ongoing violence,” said Khaled Elgindy, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute. “If Israel says, ‘We’re never leaving Gaza,’ then we can look forward to a perpetual insurgency.”

Lior Soroka in Tel Aviv contributed to this report.