Oved Lobel
Australian Jewish News, Feb. 13, 2025
“Egypt has demonstrated that it is either unable and or unwilling to play a relevant or helpful role in Gaza or with respect to Israeli-Palestinian issues generally.”
If there’s one thing at which Egypt has excelled, it is avoiding international opprobrium for its actions. It was Egypt, after all, that refused to establish a genuinely independent Palestinian entity when it occupied Gaza from 1948 until 1967. It was Egypt that joined Israel in blockading the Strip following Hamas’s takeover in 2007. It is almost never blamed for the former and rarely even mentioned when anyone condemns the latter.
In 2018, Egypt displaced tens of thousands and destroyed Egyptian Rafah in part to prevent smuggling to and from Gaza, with nary a peep from human rights NGOs.
Perhaps nothing has exposed Egyptian impotence as much as October 7 and its aftermath. Gone is the fanciful notion that Egypt has any significant influence over Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ).
Despite having established a close operational relationship with Hamas beginning in 2017 as part of Egypt’s counterinsurgency against Islamic State in the Sinai, Egypt had no inkling about October 7. After mediating multiple ceasefires between Palestinian terrorist groups in Gaza and Israel over the preceding decade, Egyptian intelligence, despite its consistent access, was none the wiser. …SOURCE