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For weeks, talk show hosts and columnists in Egyptian government media have spoken with one voice: any Israeli “occupation” of the Philadelphia Corridor, a buffer zone on the Egypt-Gaza border, could constitute a violation of Egypt’s sovereignty and national sovereignty. security. This would deal a further blow to a relationship that the Israeli military offensive in southern Gaza had already brought to its lowest level in decades.
But when the Israeli military said it had taken “tactical control” of the corridor last week, the same government spokesmen were quick to say the border area had nothing to do with Egypt. ; sovereignty is silenced.
It’s the latest indication that Cairo remains protective of its relationship with Israel, which has generated valuable military and intelligence cooperation against Egyptian insurgents, as well as billions of dollars in U.S. aid and natural gas imports in from Israel.
For Israel too, more than four decades of “cold peace” with Egypt have proven to be an essential pillar of national security. The alliance has paved Israel’s way toward better relations with its Muslim neighbors, paving the way for normalizing its ties with more countries and increasingly making it part of an anti-Iranian regional axis.
Israel nevertheless took the risk of upsetting this delicate balance, because it says it needed to take control of the Philadelphia corridor to destroy dozens of tunnels under the border which, according to it, would have allowed Hamas to smuggle in weapons in the Gaza Strip – despite Egypt’s admissions that it stopped smuggling years ago.
The Israeli army’s advance into southern Gaza and the town of Rafah in recent weeks has strained relations between the two countries, raising questions about how far Israel will go in insisting on control. total border area, and to what extent a continued Israeli presence there, Egypt can tolerate.
Egypt’s patience with Israeli military actions is running dangerously thin, as it has made clear on several occasions. Not only is the government panicked at the prospect of Gazans fleeing the fighting in Rafah on the Egyptian border, but it is also determined to show its public that it is standing up to Israel, which most Egyptians still view as an enemy despite the 45-year-old peace treaty.
Cairo has signed up to support South Africa’s case at the International Court of Justice, accusing Israel of committing genocide in Gaza. And he warned that Israel was jeopardizing the 1979 peace treaty between the two countries, resulting from the so-called Camp David Accords.
Despite denouncing Israel for cutting off humanitarian aid to Gaza, Egypt itself has temporarily halted the flow of aid trucks from its own territory, where most aid is piling up. before being trucked to the Palestinian strip – an attempt to pressure Israel to withdraw from the Rafah crossing. . The border point, the main conduit for aid and other supplies during the war, lies between Egypt and Gaza, but was recently occupied by Israel, sparking outrage among the Egyptian public.
Egypt has refrained from taking more serious steps to respond to Israeli measures, such as withdrawing its ambassador from Tel Aviv. And government-run news media appear to have contributed to efforts to limit public outrage.
Egypt is “prepared for all scenarios and will never allow any attack on its sovereignty and national security, whether directly or indirectly,” wrote Ahmed Moussa, a prominent talk show host, in an op-ed for Al-Ahram, Egypt’s flagship daily. newspaper, May 17.
Yet when Israel marched down the corridor last Wednesday, Mr. Moussa was on air, fuming at social media users who said Egypt appeared weak for allowing the seizure. He linked these “allegations” to the Muslim Brotherhood, the political Islamist group that Egypt has long demonized as a terrorist organization, of which Hamas is an offshoot.
“The Philadelphia corridor is not Egyptian territory,” Mr. Moussa insisted in a nine-minute segment devoted to the issue, displaying a giant map. “This is Palestinian territory. It doesn’t belong to us. Let me show you our borders.
Isabelle Kershner reports contributed.
