Egypt is embarrassed to admit failure to control Philadelphi, says exiled analyst
Dalia Ziada was forced to flee Cairo for criticizing Hamas after October 7; today a lobbyist against Iran in DC, she explains why Egypt rejects Israeli control over the corridor
Gianluca Pacchiani is the Arab affairs reporter for The Times of Israel
A major sticking point in the floundering ceasefire negotiations between Israel and Hamas revolves around control of the Philadelphi Corridor, a 14-kilometer (8.7-mile) strip of land along the border between the Gaza Strip and Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula.
Last week, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made the case for maintaining an Israeli military presence in this area, calling it a “strategic imperative” to prevent the Hamas terror group from rearming, as he explained during a press conference.
But both Hamas and Egypt have vehemently opposed the possibility of the IDF remaining in the Philadelphi Corridor.
While Hamas’s objection is self-evident – the Philadelphi Corridor is often referred to as the terrorist organization’s “pipeline for oxygen” as it is Gaza’s only contact with the outside world aside from Israel – Egypt’s resistance has baffled many, since Cairo already shares a long border with Israel that runs for over a hundred miles, south of the Gaza Strip.
In a recent interview with The Times of Israel, Egyptian analyst Dalia Ziada viewed Cairo’s stance very critically.
“Egyptian negotiators should approach Israel from a point of view of cooperation, rather than applying pressure,” said Ziada, who recently relocated to Washington, DC.
“The national security of our two countries is interdependent,” she added. “Israel has helped Egypt in the past against Islamist militias in Sinai, and cooperation between the two countries has been very successful in the past. Why doesn’t Egypt do the same with Israel now?”
At the same time, Ziada noted that the rhetoric around Hamas has become more positive in official Egyptian media discourse after October 7. Hamas is no longer referred to as a terror organization but as a “resistance group,” even though its gunmen have killed Egyptian soldiers and civilians in Sinai in the past.
Ziada saw three reasons for Egypt’s refusal to cooperate with Israel over the controversial corridor: the opposition of Sinai Bedouin tribes, the embarrassment of the Egyptian leadership over its failure to secure its border with Gaza, and the potential backlash from Egyptian society and the Arab world at large.
For at least two decades, Bedouin tribes in Sinai have profited from smuggling all sorts of goods, including weapons, to Gaza through tunnels beneath the border. Despite an Egyptian effort in 2015 to flood and close these tunnels in cooperation with Israel, Ziada noted, the tribes and Hamas found ways to resume their operations within two years, thanks to the complacency of corrupt members of Egyptian security forces.
Today, “Egypt is careful not to raise outrage among the tribes in Sinai by closing their source of income again, especially under the current economic crisis,” Ziada said.
In recent months, after the IDF took control of the Philadelphi Corridor, it has uncovered dozens of tunnels crossing into Egypt, including one large enough for vehicles to drive through.
Ziada believes Egyptian security authorities are embarrassed to admit that there were corrupt officials in their midst who allowed the tribes to reopen tunnels with Gaza.
“All the official statements coming out of Egypt are insisting that tunnels do not exist, despite the very clear footage that the IDF has shown of the tunnels,” Ziada said. “Their discovery is proof that the Egyptian army has failed in doing its primary job of securing the borders and protecting Egypt’s national security. Now [they are confronted with the possibility that] the Israelis are going to play this role and protect the border instead,” Ziada said.
Acquiescing to Israeli control of the Philadelphi corridor would negatively impact the image of President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, both within Egypt and across the Arab world, where support for Hamas and the Palestinian cause is widespread, said Ziada.
“It will make him appear complicit with the Israeli government,” Ziada explained.
“The narrative presented in the Arab media is not that Israel wants to control the Philadelphi Corridor to prevent weapons smuggling to Hamas and avert another October 7 attack. It is that Israel wants to further suffocate the people of Gaza,” she added.
Deflecting public outrage over Egypt’s economic woes
A potential embarrassment for el-Sissi would be highly inopportune at a time when the country is mired in a deep economic crisis. Public discontent has been mounting following years of economic mismanagement, the coronavirus pandemic and the fallout of the wars in Europe and the Middle East, not only in Gaza but also in neighboring Sudan and Libya.
Egypt has been struggling to revive the lucrative tourism sector decimated by years of turmoil, and attacks by Yemen’s Houthis on shipping routes in the Red Sea have slashed Suez Canal revenues.
In addition, a Western-backed reform program adopted in 2016 has caused prices to soar due to austerity measures. Nearly 30 percent of Egyptians currently live in poverty, according to official figures.
Egyptian citizens have endured frequent power outages over the summer months, a recurrent problem in the populous North African country that leaves people without air conditioning in the unforgiving summer heat. Meanwhile, videos have gone viral of citizens filming themselves from the fully lit New Administrative Capital under construction outside Cairo.
Appeals for demonstrations have gone unanswered, however, as citizens fear repression. Amnesty International reported in July that over the span of three weeks, over 100 people were arbitrarily detained over calls for anti-government protests.
Maintaining a strong stance in opposition to Israel appears to be a way for the government to deflect public anger, Ziada said.
“Gaza and the Palestinian cause are a golden opportunity for the Egyptian leadership to cover its domestic failures in the economy,” Ziada said. “They have greatly exaggerated their reaction to what is happening in order to direct public outrage towards Gaza. They don’t want to face double public outrage.”
The dire consequences of criticizing Hamas
Ziada, an outspoken human rights activist and the former director of a think tank that promotes liberal democracy, paid a heavy price for publicly condemning Hamas in her home country.
In the immediate aftermath of the October 7 savagery, Ziada did not mince words to criticize Hamas and those who supported it and justified its actions, calling them “a partner in their crime.”
The public uproar erupted when a few weeks later, Ziada gave interviews to the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS), an Israeli think tank, and to Israeli public broadcaster Kan in which she justified Israel’s military response against the terror group.
The backlash was immediate. Complaints were filed with Egyptian prosecutors demanding she be put on trial as a spy for Israel and for inciting war crimes, and she received death threats.
She was forced to flee and go into exile in the US in November, a decision that she described as “emotionally extremely, extremely difficult. It’s like getting out of your skin. But I had no choice.”
She lives today in Washington, DC, where she has become a senior fellow at the Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs, an Israeli think tank formerly known as the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs.
In her new role, and in cooperation with other activists, she seeks to present decision-makers with a “voice from the region” and “influence the general narrative that unfortunately has been hijacked by Islamists, by Qatari and Iranian political proxies.”
“There is a huge misunderstanding about the nature of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,” she explained. “In its core, it is only a conflict over a land. It’s very similar, for example, to the conflict in Cyprus. Two peoples want to divide a certain piece of land.”
However, over time, two layers were added to the core: a regional conflict between Israel and the Arab world, and, starting from the 1980s, a religious dimension that viewed the conflict as between Islam and Judaism.
Ziada maintains that after the signing of the Abraham Accords between Israel and four Arab countries in 2020, a historic shift has happened with regard to the different dimensions of the dispute.
“The Abraham Accords showed that Arabs and Israelis can be good neighbors and good friends regardless of what happens in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. They dissolved the layer of the Arab-Israeli conflict,” she said. “There are only two layers left. The Israeli-Palestinian dispute over land, which is very small in my opinion, and the bigger and more complex Islamic-Jewish conflict.”
“The latter, unfortunately, has been fueled by Al Jazeera and Islamists. But what we are living right now is not an Arab-Israeli conflict anymore,” she said. “It’s Iran versus Israel. Iran is merely using Arabs as its pawns against Israel.”
Agencies contributed to this report.
Are you relying on The Times of Israel for accurate and timely coverage right now? If so, please join The Times of Israel Community. For as little as $6/month, you will:
- Support our independent journalists who are working around the clock;
- Read ToI with a clear, ads-free experience on our site, apps and emails; and
- Gain access to exclusive content shared only with the ToI Community, including exclusive webinars with our reporters and weekly letters from founding editor David Horovitz.
