The World Can’t Solve the Israel-Hamas War Without Egypt

Although it will prove a challenging partner, Cairo has critical interests and strong leverage in Gaza.

By Jon B. Alterman, a senior vice president, the Brzezinski chair in global security and geostrategy, and the director of the Middle East program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, and Daniel Byman, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and professor at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service.

While Israel and Hamas remain locked in conflict, the diplomatic spotlight is shifting toward Egypt. Before the war, Egypt was increasingly marginalized in Arab politics, sidelined by the 2011 uprisings and their aftermath and suffering from an ailing economy. When it comes to Gaza, however, Egypt has critical interests as well as strong leverage. So, although it will prove a challenging partner for the United States, Israel, and many of their Western allies, Egypt is and will continue to be an essential player in the international response to the war.

While Israel and Hamas remain locked in conflict, the diplomatic spotlight is shifting toward Egypt. Before the war, Egypt was increasingly marginalized in Arab politics, sidelined by the 2011 uprisings and their aftermath and suffering from an ailing economy. When it comes to Gaza, however, Egypt has critical interests as well as strong leverage. So, although it will prove a challenging partner for the United States, Israel, and many of their Western allies, Egypt is and will continue to be an essential player in the international response to the war.

Egypt’s history with Hamas is fraught. The Egyptian military has had an enduring interest in the Gaza Strip since it initially occupied it for almost two decades after Israel’s independence in 1948, and it has remained finely attuned to the area’s security environment. Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, like many of his predecessors, is deeply hostile to Hamas, which sprung out of Egypt’s often-outlawed Muslim Brotherhood movement.

Yet Egyptian leaders also have a long history of engagement with Hamas, particularly after it became the de facto ruler of Gaza after seizing power in 2007. In past crises, Egypt has served as an interlocutor with the organization, facilitating prisoner swaps and helping negotiate cease-fires.

Egypt brings a great deal to the table as the world seeks a solution to the conflict in Gaza. Perhaps most immediately, Egypt controls the Rafah crossing, the only official entry point into the Gaza Strip not controlled by Israel. In the past, Egypt has opened and shut this crossing to put pressure on Hamas. Today, it is a vital lifeline for getting international aid into Gaza as the zone faces a massive humanitarian crisis. Rafah is also likely to serve as the exit point for U.S. and other third-country nationals to leave the war zone. Israel also has an interest in working with Egypt to ensure that weapons and other military supplies do not enter Gaza via Rafah.

In addition to Rafah, Hamas has built a network of tunnels from Gaza into Egypt. These tunnels have often enabled people in Gaza to buy smuggled goods, such as livestock and basic consumer products. Israel often acquiesced to this smuggling in order to avert a humanitarian crisis. Yet Hamas and other Palestinian militant groups have also used these tunnels to smuggle weapons into Gaza, and Palestinian fighters have passed through them to travel onward for military training in Lebanon and elsewhere.

Egypt has previously said that it was powerless to stop the tunnel commerce, and some Egyptians undoubtedly profit from the trade. However, a long-running insurgency in the adjoining area of Egypt has pushed the Egyptian military to crack down on the tunnel network in recent years, and Israel is likely to demand an end to this smuggling as part of any broader negotiation effort.

Although Egypt is not sympathetic to Hamas, the militant group has a record of reaching understandings with the Egyptian military. So whereas the Israeli defense minister has vowed to wipe Hamas “off the face of the Earth,” leaving little room for compromise, the Sisi government has left itself open to finding necessary understandings.

It is hard to predict who will have political power in Gaza in the coming months, but whoever it is will seek to negotiate with the Egyptians. At the very least, they will want international aid to flow into Gaza. Some rump elements of Hamas may also try to preserve at least some capacity to smuggle weapons and other military necessities. They will also likely seek a limited ability to send people out of the strip, including top officials fleeing from Israeli military action. Perhaps most important, whoever is left standing in Gaza will seek an Egyptian guarantee for whatever deal is eventually signed to end the fighting.

Israel, of course, will press Cairo to stop any smuggling and to arrest any Hamas officials who might try to flee to Egypt. Egypt will determine the terms of that agreement.

The people of Gaza and Hamas—or any alternative government that arises—do not have a huge amount to offer Egypt, but they do have some assets. They can use their influence to increase or diminish Egyptian security in the Sinai Peninsula, and they can share smuggling revenues. Their allies can also reward Egyptians who look the other way on smuggling. Most critically, if Egypt’s alternative to having an understanding with Hamas or its successors is violence and chaos in an area adjoining Egypt, an understanding looks much more attractive.

Egypt has a great deal at stake as it engages in Gaza. Once the center of Arab politics and culture, Egypt has been marginalized as its problems grew and as the world’s attention shifted to the Persian Gulf. For the Sisi government, taking a central role in such a high-profile pan-Arab issue as the Israel-Hamas war brings prestige to a government that is increasingly struggling at home.

Egypt is also not above benefiting economically from its influence in this conflict. Former President Hosni Mubarak negotiated more than $10 billion in foreign debt relief from the United States and its allies in return for Egypt’s assistance in the 1991 Gulf War. Cairo’s borrowing spree in recent years has meant that Egypt’s foreign debt today is many times that amount, and its economy is groaning under the weight of repayments. If Egypt were to play a central role in settling Gaza issues, it would greatly benefit the region. To ensure Cairo’s support, Gulf governments and Western governments alike would almost certainly need to ensure that Egypt sees financial benefits from doing so.

Egypt also faces legitimate security concerns in Gaza. For more than a decade in northern Sinai, Egypt has been fighting an insurgency that is composed of jihadis, Bedouin, and criminal gangs. Gaza smuggling operations have helped fund and arm the insurgents, and Egypt wants them stopped. Even more, Egypt fears that a flood of refugees from Gaza would destabilize an already troubled part of Sinai, putting demands on jobs and resources and further radicalizing the local population.

Although Egypt’s rulers have often found common cause with Israel on security issues, they have no intention of further abetting the depopulation of the Palestinian territories. After three-quarters of a century, the Egyptian public remains deeply sympathetic to the Palestinian cause. They would see any resettlement of Palestinians on Egyptian soil as a likely permanent arrangement, fearing a repeat of past Palestinian refugee flows that ended the same way, as well as a betrayal of Palestinians’ rights to their land.

However, the United States is leading much of the diplomacy on Gaza, and for Washington, the Sisi government is a difficult partner. The U.S. government recently decided to withhold $85 million in previously earmarked military assistance to Egypt over human rights concerns, and some members of Congress were pressing to cut aid even more.

And earlier this month, prosecutors revealed a shocking indictment alleging that Egyptian intelligence had recruited U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, to use his official position to benefit the Egyptian government in exchange for hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes. In other words, Washington’s relations with Cairo are particularly strained at the moment.

Arab governments, too, have complained that Egypt can be a trying partner. The Egyptian government has a strong sense of both its own importance and its own interests. Egyptian cooperation comes at a price.

Although Sisi’s peace conference on the Israel-Hamas conflict this past weekend produced nothing of substance, Egypt will be an increasingly vital player should all parties look for an off-ramp to this crisis in the coming weeks and months. As a result, the United States is better off working with Egypt than trying to marginalize it.

In the near term, Egyptian cooperation is uniquely necessary in addressing the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, including by ensuring the supply of fuel and medicine via Rafah. In the longer term, Egypt will play a crucial role in facilitating whatever political arrangement emerges in Gaza, whether Hamas survives as the government or if a caretaker regime of some sort assumes power. As the front-line Arab state, it will inevitably play some role in enforcing that arrangement as well. Egypt will pursue its own interests given the importance of securing the Egypt-Sinai border, but Cairo can also play an important leadership role, leading the Arab governments in legitimating any deal.

As an agreement emerges, Egypt will surely seek benefits. The United States can assist Egypt financially, mostly via its influence over international financial institutions, to which Egypt owes tens of billions of dollars. The United States can also assist Egypt in its fight against instability in Sinai. While this will help improve Egyptian security, part of this is a U.S. fight, given the presence of transnational jihadis in Sinai who also target the United States. Greater intelligence assistance is one place to begin.

Some will object to engaging more deeply with an Egyptian government that has committed, and continues to commit, serious human rights abuses. Rather than see this as an unsavory but necessary transactional relationship that leaves both sides feeling exploited, however, both countries should view this as an opportunity to recast the donor-client relationship that has proven so corrosive after 45 years.

Neither Egypt nor the United States can solve the crisis in Gaza alone. At the same time, neither can do so without the other. The relationship has often foundered because there has been no important project that the two sides feel equally strongly about. Gaza could prove an enduring irritant to both sides. It is in the interests of both countries to make it into an arena for cooperation.

Foreign Policy