Egypt's relations with Israel hit a dangerous low over plans for post-war Gaza

President El Sisi has warned Israel against violating peace treaty with Egypt

Police presence on the Egyptian side of the Rafah border crossing between Egypt and the Gaza Strip. EPA

Israel's swift rejection of the Egyptian plan endorsed this week by Arab leaders for the reconstruction and political future of Gaza has taken relations between the two neighbours to a dangerous low, but analysts believe the prospect of the pair tearing up their 1979 peace treaty or going to war remains slim.

Egypt's criticism of Israel, already scathing since the start of the Gaza war, has been intensifying. Egyptian troops in the Sinai Peninsula, the theatre of operations in the four full-fledged wars between the two nations, have been significantly reinforced, sources say. They have staged several demonstrations of power with large-scale, live-fire war drills in the arid and mostly desert region.

Officials and pro-government media have meanwhile been employing anti-Israeli rhetoric that harks back to the years of unfettered enmity between the two countries before they signed the US-sponsored peace treaty.

The treaty has for decades been seen as a cornerstone of regional stability and a model for others in the Middle East to follow. However, it has appeared to be on the brink of unravelling at multiple points since the start of the Gaza war in October 2023, with Cairo routinely levelling serious accusations against Israel.

A drone view shows the extent of destruction by the Israeli army in Beit Hanoun in the northern Gaza Strip. Reuters

Egyptian leaders from President Abdel Fattah El Sisi down to cabinet ministers, diplomats and politicians, have accused Israel of aiming to make Gaza uninhabitable through scorched-earth tactics, using hunger as a weapon and coercing Palestinians into leaving their ancestral lands.

In a thinly-veiled warning over the fate of the treaty, Mr El Sisi told Arab leaders gathered in Egypt on Tuesday that the historic accord provides for a legal commitment against creating conditions conducive to the Palestinians leaving their lands to resettle elsewhere.

“It's a violation of that commitment to respect the sanctity of safe borders,” he said, alluding to Israel's warm welcome of US President Donald Trump's plan to resettle Gaza's Palestinians in Egypt and Jordan while the US takes over the coastal territory and turns it into a glitzy beach resort.

“The Egypt that pioneered peace in our region some 50 years ago and honoured and protected it only knows the kind of peace that's based on right and justice and safeguards the land and sovereignty.”

While Mr El Sisi's warning remained rooted within the parameters of diplomatic language, the pro-government media in Egypt has gone way beyond that in recent days, threatening Israel with a harsh military response if it breaches Egypt's territorial sovereignty.

Comments made this week by Israel's defence minister warning Egypt against violating the peace treaty only fuelled the anti-Israeli content in the government-controlled media in Egypt.

File Photo: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. AP

However, the analysts believe Egypt and Israel will neither go to war over Gaza – they already fought four wars between 1948 and 1973 – nor scrap the peace treaty.

“The treaty is durable but what exists now between Egypt and Israel is a very cold peace. It's a peace between the security elites in both countries, not people-to-people peace,” said Michael Hanna, a prominent New York-based Middle East expert with the International Crisis Group, a global think tank.

“Both sides have since the start of the Gaza war committed technical violations of the treaty but its core has not been touched,” he added.

That cold peace is manifested in a variety of ways.

The Israeli embassy in Cairo has for months had the bare minimum number of diplomats stationed in the Egyptian capital, according to the sources. Mr El Sisi and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are not known to have spoken on the phone or in person since the Gaza war began, with the sources saying the Egyptian leader has refused to take Mr Netanyahu's calls on several occasions.

Egypt has also said it was joining South Africa's case before the International Court of Justice that accuses Israel of committing genocide in Gaza.

"Humanity's collective memory will long pause at what happened in Gaza … and how the aggression against Gaza left the history of humanity with a stigma that's headlined with the spread of hatred and the absence of humanity and justice," the Egyptian leader said on Tuesday.

Conceived as a counter to Mr Trump's controversial vision for postwar Gaza, the main feature of Egypt's $53-billion plan is allowing the reconstruction of Gaza to take place while the territory's 2.3 million residents remain there. It also envisages upgrading the capabilities of Gaza's police force and the possibility that Hamas will disarm if there exists a clear path towards a two-state solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

Egyptian Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty. Reuters

Shortly after the Arab summit ended on Tuesday, the Israeli foreign ministry rejected the outcome, saying the Arab plan failed to address realities after the Hamas-led attack of October 2023.

“Hamas' brutal terrorist attack, which resulted in thousands of Israeli deaths and hundreds of kidnappings, is not mentioned, nor is there any condemnation of this murderous terrorist entity,” the ministry said.

For its part, the US said the plan failed to address the reality that the enclave is “uninhabitable” and that residents “cannot humanely live in a territory covered in debris and unexploded ordnance”.

Egypt’s Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty responded to Israel's rejection of the plan with a tirade of accusations, branding its position as “unacceptable” as well as “stubborn and extremist”.

“There will be no peace neither to Israel or to the region” without establishing an independent Palestinian state in accordance with UN resolutions, he said. “Israel violates all international law rules … International law must be imposed. No single state should be allowed to impose its will on the international community.”

A displaced Palestinian woman reads the Quran before breaking fast at the Bureij refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip. AFP

The analysts, however, believe Washington's rejection of the Egyptian plan is much more consequential than Israel's, with far reaching ramifications on the region.

“The American rejection will inflict serious damage on the already fragile peace prospects," said Marwa Abdel Halim, an expert on US policies with the Egyptian Centre for strategic Studies, a Cairo-based think tank.

“It will shake the United States' relations with its friends in the region and create conditions in the Middle East that will force the Americans to increase the use of its security and military resources to protect its interests in the region,” she said.

President El Sisi, whose country has received billions of dollars' worth of US military and economic aid since the late 1970s, has indefinitely postponed a White House visit scheduled last month after Mr Trump revealed his plan for Gaza, which has been globally and regionally rejected as ethnic cleansing.

However, the Egyptian leader continues to hope that Mr Trump can be persuaded to drop his Gaza plan as well as use his leverage to force the Israelis and Palestinians back to their long-stalled peace talks.

“The ceasefire could not have been realised without the much appreciated efforts of President Donald Trump and his administration, which we hope will continue to sustain the ceasefire in Gaza … and resurrect the hope of Palestinians to have their independent state,” he told this week's Arab summit.