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For weeks, talk-show hosts and newspaper columnists throughout Egypt’s government-managed media spoke with one voice: Any Israeli “occupation” of the Philadelphi Hall, a buffer zone on the Egypt-Gaza border, may represent a violation of Egypt’s sovereignty and nationwide safety. That might deal an extra blow to a relationship that Israel’s army offensive in southern Gaza had already delivered to its lowest level in a long time.
However when Israel’s army stated that it had seized “tactical management” of the hall final week, the identical authorities mouthpieces have been fast to say that the border space had nothing to do with Egypt; sovereignty went unmentioned.
It was the newest indication that Cairo stays protecting of its relationship with Israel, which has generated useful army and intelligence cooperation in opposition to Egyptian insurgents, in addition to billions of {dollars} in American assist and pure gasoline imports from Israel.
For Israel, too, the greater than 4 a long time of so-called chilly peace with Egypt has proved to be a necessary pillar of nationwide safety. The alliance gave Israel a path to higher relations with its Muslim neighbors, paving the way in which for its normalization of ties with extra nations and making it an more and more integral a part of a regional, anti-Iranian axis.
Nonetheless, Israel took the chance of upsetting the fragile steadiness as a result of it says it wanted to take management of the Philadelphi Hall to destroy dozens of tunnels beneath the border that it says have enabled Hamas to smuggle arms into the strip — regardless of Egypt’s avowals that it put a cease to the smuggling years in the past.
The Israeli army’s push into southern Gaza and the town of Rafah in current weeks has now put a severe pressure on ties between the 2 nations, elevating questions on how far Israel will go in insisting on full management over the border space, and the way a lot of a continued Israeli presence there Egypt can tolerate.
Egypt’s persistence with Israel’s army strikes is carrying dangerously skinny, because it has repeatedly made clear. Not solely is the federal government panicked on the prospect of Gazans fleeing the Rafah combating over the border into Egypt, however additionally it is decided to indicate its public that it’s standing as much as Israel, which most Egyptians nonetheless regard as an enemy regardless of the 45-year-old peace treaty.
Cairo has registered to talk in assist of South Africa’s case on the Worldwide Courtroom of Justice accusing Israel of committing genocide in Gaza. And it has warned that Israel is jeopardizing the 1979 peace treaty between the 2 nations, which grew out of what are often called the Camp David Accords.
Although it has denounced Israel for slicing off humanitarian assist to Gaza, Egypt itself quickly stopped the move of assist vans from its personal territory, the place most assist accumulates earlier than being trucked to the Palestinian strip — an try to strain Israel into withdrawing from the Rafah crossing. That border level, the primary conduit for assist and different provides through the conflict, lies between Egypt and Gaza however was not too long ago occupied by Israel, drawing public outrage in Egypt.
Egypt has kept away from taking extra severe steps to answer Israel’s strikes, akin to withdrawing its ambassador from Tel Aviv. And the government-managed information media seems to have been serving to with efforts to restrict public outrage.
Egypt is “prepared for all situations, and can by no means permit any encroachment on its sovereignty and its nationwide safety, both straight or not directly,” Ahmed Moussa, a outstanding talk-show host, wrote in a column for Al-Ahram, Egypt’s flagship every day newspaper, on Might 17.
But when Israel took the hall final Wednesday, Mr. Moussa was on the air, fulminating in opposition to social media customers who stated Egypt seemed weak for permitting the seizure. He linked such “allegations” to the Muslim Brotherhood, the political Islamist group that Egypt has lengthy demonized as a terrorist group, of which Hamas is an offshoot.
“The Philadelphi Hall just isn’t Egyptian territory,” Mr. Moussa insisted in a nine-minute phase dedicated to the difficulty, displaying a large map. “It’s Palestinian territory. It doesn’t belong to us. Let me present you our borders.”
Isabel Kershner contributed reporting.
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