Is Sisi fooling us about his ties with Israel?

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi is apparently angry with the Zionist state of Israel and its Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu due to the “failure” of attempts to “rein in” far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir. It was Ben-Gvir who defied the whole world and desecrated Al-Aqsa Mosque last week, the third holiest site for Muslims around the world.

According to London-based newspaper Al-Araby Al-Jadeed on Sunday, sources from Sisi’s office pointed out that Ben-Gvir’s “visit” to the Islamic site in occupied East Jerusalem, was problematic for the Egyptian leadership. The sources described a sense of “resentment” and “embarrassment” in the Egyptian president’s office, especially as it became clear that Netanyahu had allowed the “infringement” of the holy site despite claiming that he asked Ben-Gvir to postpone it.

Furthermore, the sources were reported to have said that the sanctions imposed on the Palestinian Authority by Israel have infuriated the Egyptian president and “made it difficult for Egypt to mediate” a potential prisoner swap deal with the Palestinian Islamic Resistance Movement, Hamas. The movement is said to be holding four Israeli captives in the besieged Gaza Strip.

Al-Araby Al-Jadeed referred to its sources as diplomatic staff, noting that they said that Sisi got angry and was embarrassed because he had previously spoken with Netanyahu and stressed “the necessity of avoiding any measures that could lead to a tense situation and complicate the regional scene.”

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In fact, the situation is outrageous and embarrassing not least because a previous Egyptian leader defied his people and took them in a direction against their will. Egypt was the first Arab country to make peace with the Israeli occupation state in 1979, a move which most Egyptians still reject. Subsequent Egyptian presidents since Anwar Sadat have maintained this “normalisation” with Israel.

When the Egyptians had a very brief time of freedom, following the 25 January 2011 Revolution which ousted the late dictator Hosni Mubarak who was a great friend of Israel, they attacked the Israeli Embassy in Cairo several times. Ambassador Yitzhak Levanon and senior embassy staff left the country in September 2012.

However, Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi, who came to power through a bloody military coup in 2013 and was sworn in as elected president in 2014, allowed the Israeli ambassador to return to Cairo despite the Egyptian people’s rejection of ties with the occupation state. The then Israeli Ambassador, Haim Koren, received a hot welcome in Cairo in the presence of the US ambassador.

Despite the fact that Levanon fled following the storming of the Israeli Embassy in Cairo after the Israeli army killed five Egyptian policemen, the Sisi regime hailed Koren as a friend. The Egyptian president has since strengthened ties with the Israeli occupation, standing with it in its oppression of the Palestinians. Only now, though, do we hear from his office that Sisi is outraged and embarrassed by the Israeli violations and the desecration of Al-Aqsa Mosque by the extremist Ben-Gvir.

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Did not he know that Ben-Gvir has a history of anti-Arab racism and far-right fanaticism? Did he not know that he is a former member of an outlawed Jewish militant group and he came up through the ranks of the Kahane Chai organisation, which is blacklisted in Israel and the United States? And that the organisation’s racist ideology is at the heart of everything that he says and does?

This is not the first time that Ben-Gvir has stormed into Al-Aqsa Mosque as a member of the Israeli parliament, the Knesset. He has long been a controversial figure.

If Sisi knew this, then how could he have sent congratulations to Netanyahu’s latest coalition government in which Ben-Gvir is a minister? If Sisi, as the president of Egypt, which has the largest Arab population, did not know Ben-Gvir’s racist background, then something is seriously wrong with his advisers.

We have to assume, therefore, that Sisi knew all of this, and yet he still sent an Egyptian delegation to take part in a three-day preparatory meeting for Israeli and Arab envoys being held in Abu Dhabi in advance of the next Negev Forum summit slated to take place in Morocco in March. If Sisi is really angry with Netanyahu, why wasn’t the delegation ordered to put regional threats such as the rise of the extreme far-right in Israel on the agenda? Or why didn’t he simply boycott the meeting in protest? That’s what Jordan did in the wake of Ben-Gvir’s incursion at Al-Aqsa Mosque.

Moreover, according to Israeli news website i24 News, another reason for Jordan’s absence was that the Hashemite Kingdom said that it would not participate in the Negev Forum without Palestinian representation. The Palestinian Authority refuses to attend and accuses fellow Arab states of betraying Palestine.

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All that Egypt has done is to tighten the restrictions on the Palestinians in the besieged Gaza Strip. On the ground, Egypt restricts the movement of Palestinian travellers from Gaza through Egypt, their only real outlet to the world. The restrictions caused delays for the travellers, even those heading for Makkah and Madinah for the Umrah pilgrimage.

If the Egyptian president really wants to show how angry he is about unilateral Israeli actions, could he sever ties with Israel? This would be a very difficult, and major, decision for him to take with serious implications for Egypt’s relations with states from which it gets huge amounts of aid. However, it is well within his powers to ban Israelis from going to Egyptian resorts on Sinai’s Red Sea coast. Such a move could push Netanyahu to review his policies.

Sisi could also take a number of measures in support of the Palestinians in Gaza to demonstrate his anger with the Israeli occupation authorities. He could open the Rafah Crossing between Egypt and Gaza for 24 hours, seven days a week, like normal international borders. He could lift the ban on the hundreds of commodities which are not allowed into the Gaza Strip and thus make life easier for the Palestinians in the enclave whose economy is on the verge of collapse. Israel wouldn’t be happy, but Sisi could send the right sort of message by doing this.

The reality, though, is that the Egyptian president is neither angry nor embarrassed with Israel. He is a hypocrite, and pays lip-service to any kind of protest for public consumption only. Normalisation continues as usual away from the public gaze. Is Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi fooling us all about his ties with Israel? Of course he is. We would be foolish to think otherwise.

Israel’s newly appointed National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir stormed the courtyards of Al-Aqsa Mosque – Cartoon [Sabaaneh/Middle East Monitor]

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.