Egypt's Duplicity, the World's Silence

by Bassam Tawil

• "A one-hundred-dollar bill does wonders with an Egyptian police officer at a Sinai roadblock who intercepts a truck packed with 'pipes.'" — Efraim Inbar and Mordechai Kedar, BESA Center, January 22, 2009.
• This is just another example of how, when Palestinians become victims of oppressive measures taken against them by their Arab brothers, the world does not care a bit. About a decade ago, when Egypt demolished dozens of houses and buildings in Rafah as part of a campaign to combat terrorism, no one said a word against the Egyptians -- or even bothered to look.
• If the Egyptians actually cared about the Palestinians, instead of blocking the entry of aid into the Gaza Strip, they could easily coordinate with Israel though alternative border crossings such as the nearby Kerem Shalom terminal.
• Evidently the Egyptians would rather see the Gazans starve; then, the international community, as usual, would hold only Israel responsible.
• That is the real problem: Where is the demand from the international community for Egypt to deliver aid to the Gaza Strip? Where are social media posts, the US college campus protests, and the op-eds condemning Egypt for deliberately withholding aid from Gaza's Palestinians?
• Why doesn't the Biden administration pressure Egypt, and not just Israel, to allow aid to enter Gaza for the Palestinians?
• Egypt has, in fact, been imposing a blockade on the Gaza Strip for the past 15 years.... Where are the protestors calling to stop the billions in aid to Egypt? They do not, of course, exist. The protests were never about helping Palestinians. They were always only about attacking Jews.
• This is the same Egypt that been displacing thousands of Palestinians from Rafah after demolishing their homes and is now blocking aid to the Palestinians, that has piously decided to join the South African case against Israel at the ICJ.
• Now that Israel is attempting to dismantle a terrorist group whose primary objective is the elimination of Israel, the Biden administration and many in the international community suddenly claim they are "outraged."
• If they really want to help the Palestinians, they could begin by filing cases against Egypt and the Arab states in the region that, for many decades, have turned their backs on the Palestinians and paid billions to their governments to keep on mistreating them.

If the Egyptians actually cared about the Palestinians, instead of blocking the entry of aid into the Gaza Strip, they could easily coordinate with Israel though alternative border crossings. Evidently the Egyptians would rather see the Gazans starve; then, the international community, as usual, would hold only Israel responsible. Pictured: Egyptian army soldiers stand guard at the Rafah crossing on Egypt's border with the Gaza Strip on October 20, 2023. (Photo by Ali Moustafa/AFP via Getty Images)


On May 12, Egypt announced that it will support South Africa's case in the International Court of Justice (ICJ), where Israel is accused of "genocide" for defending its citizens against Hamas's murderers and rapists who invaded Israeli communities on October 7, 2023. The announcement came in response to the ongoing Israeli military operation against Hamas terrorists and bases, especially in the city of Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip.

If the South Africans had any decency, they would not only call out the Egyptians for being hypocrites and liars, they would also file a case with the ICJ against Egypt for its role in transforming the Gaza Strip into a weapons depot and continuing to deprive the Palestinians there of humanitarian aid.

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