High Information
For weeks, talk-show hosts and newspaper columnists throughout Egypt’s government-managed media spoke with one voice: Any Israeli “occupation” of the Philadelphi Hall, a buffer zone on the Egypt-Gaza border, may represent a violation of Egypt’s sovereignty and nationwide safety. That will deal an extra blow to a relationship that Israel’s navy offensive in southern Gaza had already delivered to its lowest level in a long time.
However when Israel’s navy mentioned that it had seized “tactical management” of the hall final week, the identical authorities mouthpieces have been fast to say that the border space had nothing to do with Egypt; sovereignty went unmentioned.
It was the most recent indication that Cairo stays protecting of its relationship with Israel, which has generated useful navy and intelligence cooperation towards Egyptian insurgents, in addition to billions of {dollars} in American help and pure gasoline imports from Israel.
For Israel, too, greater than 4 a long time of a so-called “chilly peace” with Egypt has proved to be an important pillar of nationwide safety. The alliance gave Israel a path to raised relations with its Muslim neighbors, paving the way in which for its normalization of ties with extra international locations and making it an more and more integral a part of a regional, anti-Iranian axis.
Nonetheless, Israel took the danger of upsetting the fragile stability as a result of it says it wanted to take management of the Philadelphi Hall to destroy dozens of tunnels below the border that it says have enabled Hamas to smuggle arms into the strip — regardless of Egypt’s avowals that it put a cease to the smuggling years in the past.
The Israeli navy’s push into southern Gaza and the town of Rafah in current weeks has now put a severe pressure on ties between the 2 international locations, elevating questions on how far Israel will go in insisting on full management over the border space, and the way a lot of a continued Israeli presence there Egypt can tolerate.
Egypt’s persistence with Israel’s navy strikes is sporting dangerously skinny, because it has repeatedly made clear. Not solely is the federal government panicked on the prospect of Gazans fleeing the Rafah preventing over the border into Egypt, however additionally it is decided to point out its public that it’s standing as much as Israel, which most Egyptians nonetheless regard as an enemy regardless of the 45-year-old peace treaty.
Cairo has registered to talk in assist of South Africa’s case on the Worldwide Courtroom of Justice accusing Israel of committing genocide in Gaza. And it has warned that Israel is jeopardizing the 1979 peace treaty between the 2 international locations, which grew out of what are often called the Camp David Accords.
Although it has denounced Israel for reducing off humanitarian help to Gaza, Egypt itself quickly stopped the movement of help vans from its personal territory, the place most help accumulates earlier than being trucked to the Palestinian strip — an try and strain Israel into withdrawing from the Rafah crossing. That border level, the principle conduit for help and different provides throughout the struggle, lies between Egypt and Gaza however was not too long ago occupied by Israel, drawing public outrage in Egypt.
Egypt has kept away from taking extra severe steps to reply to Israel’s strikes, similar to withdrawing its ambassador from Tel Aviv. And the government-managed information media seems to have been serving to with efforts to restrict public outrage.
Egypt is “prepared for all eventualities, and can by no means enable any encroachment on its sovereignty and its nationwide safety, both instantly or not directly,” Ahmed Moussa, a distinguished talk-show host, wrote in a column for Al-Ahram, Egypt’s flagship every day newspaper, on Might 17.
But when Israel took the hall final Wednesday, Mr. Moussa was on the air, fulminating towards social media customers who mentioned Egypt seemed weak for permitting the seizure. He linked such “allegations” to the Muslim Brotherhood, the political Islamist group that Egypt has lengthy demonized as a terrorist group, of which Hamas is an offshoot.
“The Philadelphi Hall shouldn’t be Egyptian territory,” Mr. Moussa insisted in a nine-minute section dedicated to the problem, displaying an enormous map. “It’s Palestinian territory. It doesn’t belong to us. Let me present you our borders.”
Isabel Kershner contributed reporting.
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