Tensions between Egypt and Israel are extraordinarily high at present, especially with the war in Gaza leaving behind a human and a material toll very difficult for Egyptians to fathom or disregard. [Getty]
Reactions to an Israeli Embassy in Cairo announcement about a purported iftar party it organised for some Egyptian businessmen and public figures have offered insights into growing public anger in Egypt with Israel.
The announcement, posted to a Facebook page known to be affiliated to the embassy, talks about a party organised for the aforementioned Egyptian figures on 17 March.
Together with the announcement, the embassy published an old photo of an extended table on which food was placed, even as nobody was seated on the chairs around the table.
Comments made by Egyptians on the Facebook post about the announcement were, however, expressive of mounting public disappointment with Israel.
“Provide us with a list of the honourable figures who attended, please,” one man commented sarcastically.
“Those attending this iftar party are mere traitors,” commented another.
“Who were the Zionists who attended such an iftar,” wrote a third.
Like other foreign diplomatic missions in Egypt do during the Islamic month of Ramadan every year, the Israeli Embassy in Cairo organises an iftar party for local media, the business community and public figures within its PR policy and to boost what it describes as “friendship” with the Egyptian people.
Those attending such embassy events and others usually practice extreme caution and avoid being snapped on camera, realising the risks they run in case they are caught in the act of attending such events or standing by someone from Israel.
Bad timing
The purported iftar party comes at a critical time in the region and for relations between Egypt and Israel.
It comes just as Israel mounts yet a new war against the people of the Gaza Strip, violating a ceasefire brokered between Israel and the Gaza-ruling Hamas in mid-January.
This brief lull in fighting followed 15 months of unrelenting Israeli attacks on all parts of Gaza, ones that left over 40,000 residents of the coastal Palestinian enclave dead, tens of thousands of others injured and almost all of Gaza in ruins.
The outbreak of Israeli attacks on the Palestinian territory also came as Egypt put together a plan for the reconstruction of Gaza, one that won approval from Arab states and Muslim nations.
Even before the current war in Gaza, which followed deadly attacks by Hamas and other Gaza factions on Israeli military bases and settlements in and around the Gaza envelope on 7 October 2023, public aversion to Israel in Egypt was at its highest.
In 2016, an Egyptian lawmaker figured out the cost of challenging this aversion when he met the Israeli ambassador in Cairo.
Tawfiq Okasha, a controversial media figure, was expelled from the Egyptian parliament after coming at the centre of a massive public slander campaign.
The last time the Israeli Embassy in Cairo published photos of one of its events with Egyptian attendees in it was in 2018 when it organised a ceremony marking the anniversary of the founding of the State of Israel at a hotel near the iconic Tahrir Square at the centre of the Egyptian capital, Cairo.
Ordinary people reacted very angrily against that event. They also launched into a tirade of criticism of the Egyptians who attended it.
Egypt was the first Arab country to sign a peace treaty with Israel in 1979, following a series of wars between the two states, ones precipitated by Israeli policies against Egypt, including Israel’s participation in the tripartite aggression against Egypt in 1956, its massive attack against the Arab country in 1967 and the occupation of Sinai, the Egyptian territory that abuts Gaza and Israel, in the same year.
Although the peace treaty ended the state of war between the two countries and neutralised Egypt as far as conflicts between Israel, on one hand, and other Arab states, on the other, were concerned, Egypt’s relations with Israel at the public level continue to be largely shaped and affected by these conflicts, analysts in Cairo said.
“Egyptians have always distrusted Israel because of its denial of the Palestinians’ rights, aggressions against holy sites in the occupied Palestinian territories, and repeated attacks in Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon,” Ahmed Rakha, a former assistant to the Egyptian foreign minister, told The New Arab.
“Israel also stages aggressions against Syria and proves every day that it does not want to live in peace with its neighbouring states by its full disregard for United Nations resolutions,” he added.
He noted that ordinary Egyptians see all this clearly, which fills them with anger.
Extraordinary high tensions
Tensions between Egypt and Israel are extraordinarily high at present, especially with the genocidal war on Gaza leaving behind a human and a material toll very difficult for Egyptians to fathom or disregard.
Egypt, which works tooth and nail to bring the ceasefire back on track, is especially worried that the current Israeli operation in Gaza will result in the displacement of the Palestinian territory’s population of 2.2 million into Sinai.
In a phone conversation with the emir of Kuwait on 18 March, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi described renewed Israeli attacks in Gaza as part of deliberate attempts to make this Palestinian territory unliveable and drive its people out of it.
On 4 March, Sisi warned that forcing people from their land would violate the 1979 peace treaty between Israel and his country.
Egypt’s formulation of a reconstruction plan for Gaza came in the wake of its categorical rejection of taking in Gaza refugees.
The outcome of the current war in Gaza, analysts in Cairo said, will most likely decide the course of relations between the two countries for many years to come.
Growing tensions between Egypt and Israel cannot, meanwhile, damp out other aspects of relations between the two countries.
Egypt and Israel maintain security and intelligence cooperation. The two countries’ economic dependence on each other also grows over the years, with Israel becoming a main natural gas supplier for energy-hungry Egypt.
In 2024, there was a marked surge in trade between the two countries, despite the war in Gaza.
Nevertheless, reactions to events like the aforementioned iftar party dispel illusions about relations between the two countries, particularly at the public level in the light of Israel’s negative regional policies, analysts in Cairo said.
“The fact is that there has been official, not public, normalisation between Egypt and Israel since 1979,” Ibrahim al-Darawi, an Egyptian specialist in Israeli affairs, told TNA.
“This public normalisation will not happen unless Israel respects its peace with Egypt, where the people view the current war on Gaza as only aiming at displacing its people into Sinai,” he added.
