Israelis have long viewed Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi as an ally in the fight against the Muslim Brotherhood and Iran. Sisi, after all, led the Egyptian military in overthrowing Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood government of then-president Mohamed Morsi in 2013. Since the Hamas regime in Gaza played a key role in ousting former President Hosni Mubarak from power and assisting Muslim Brotherhood terrorists from escaping Egyptian prisons in the Sinai in 2011 and 2012, el-Sisi also shared Israel’s negative view of Hamas. He stood with Israel during the Hamas war against Israel in 2014.
But over the past several years, Sisi’s position has changed. And since Oct. 7, Egypt’s role in Hamas’s build-up of its forces and military capabilities has come into sharp relief. Indeed, as the months have passed, the conclusion has become unavoidable that far from acting as a restraint on Hamas’s military and economic power as it did a decade ago, Egypt in recent years, and still today is a major state sponsor of Hamas.
At every stage of the war—from the Oct. 7 Hamas invasion and slaughter on—el-Sisi’s regime has undermined Israel’s war effort in a bid to prevent the Jewish state from defeating Hamas. The motivations for Egypt’s support for Hamas are still difficult to assess. However, the financial interests of el-Sisi’s family appear to have been advanced significantly through cooperation with Hamas’s efforts to build tunnels across the border with Egypt. These operations have included smuggling weapons and raw materials for constructing weapons and tunnels, and transiting Hamas personnel between Gaza and the Sinai Peninsula.
Then there is ideology.
Along with Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Bahrain, in 2017, Egypt abrogated all diplomatic ties with Qatar over Qatar’s support for Iran and its subversion of moderate Arab regimes on behalf of the Muslim Brotherhood through its satellite television network Al Jazeera. In January 2021, Egypt was the first of those states to renew its ties with Qatar.
That rapprochement may well have also led to a reduction in ideological tensions between the regime and the Muslim Brotherhood generally and between the el-Sisi regime and the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood—Hamas, specifically.
For decades, observers of Egypt’s military buildup, and its development of military infrastructure in Sinai have warned that Egypt’s commitment to peace with Israel may be more declarative than real. In light of what Israel has seen since Oct. 7, which has pointed to close cooperation and coordination with Hamas, Egypt’s massive investment in its arsenals and military infrastructures in the Sinai has increased concern that under el-Sisi, Egypt is moving deliberately towards a confrontational posture towards the State of Israel.
On May 17, Israel revealed that during the early stages of the Israeli military’s operation to seize the international border zone between Egypt and Gaza in Rafah, the Israel Defense Forces discovered upwards of 50 underground tunnels that traverse the border between Gaza and Egypt. The scope of the cross-border tunnel project indicates that Egyptian authorities were not merely aware of Hamas’s operation. They were partners in Hamas’s efforts.
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