President “El-Sisi” stressed that Egypt will continue to call for addressing the roots of the crisis represented by the occupation and will spare no effort in defending the legitimate rights of the long-suffering Palestinian people. It will continue to work with both sides of the conflict to revive the political track. It will also continue its efforts to deal with immediate challenges and work with all parties on the truce in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, as well as continuing efforts to support the reconstruction of the Strip and calling on the international community to increase its contribution to alleviating the suffering of the Palestinians in Gaza.
There is a “permanent Egyptian role to achieve calm and peace between Palestine and Israel”, and there are risks of the crisis expanding, the occurrence of more victims, and the impact of this on security and stability. This is supposed to be reaffirmed by President “El-Sisi” through (Egypt’s hosting of the international peace conference in the new administrative capital in Cairo, on Saturday, October 21, 2023), through a meeting of leaders at the summit so that the entire international community speaks with one voice on the importance of calm and providing prospects for resolving the conflict on the basis of achieving peace and stability. There is a current Egyptian focus on calm at this time, while also focusing on the importance of resolving two states and achieving peace.
Since the outbreak of fighting in the occupied Palestinian territories, Egypt has intensified its regional and international contacts in order to seek to reduce the escalation, and to seek to mitigate the impact of the continuing Israeli bombing on the Gaza Strip. Cairo stressed the necessity of opening a humanitarian corridor to bring aid into the Gaza Strip, and warned against the “forced displacement” of the Strip’s residents. Towards the Egyptian borders, and stressed that “its sovereignty is not transmissible” and that “Egypt’s national security is a red line, and there will be no complacency in protecting it”.
It Is noteworthy that Egypt had hosted an emergency international summit in the city of Sharm El-Sheikh, which was held under similar circumstances, during the Israeli aggression on Gaza in January 2009, to discuss the situation in Gaza with regional and European countries. European and Arab leaders, and representatives of the United Nations and the League of Nations participated in it. Arab, and Palestinian President “Mahmoud Abbas” was absent from it at that time, as a result of Israeli measures.
The Egyptian keenness to address the root causes of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict came during the telephone discussions held between Egyptian President “Abdel Fattah El-Sisi” and Egyptian Foreign Minister “Sameh Shoukry” with a number of European presidents and officials, after the outbreak of the “Al-Aqsa Flood” operation of the Palestinian Hamas movement in Confronting Israel and the Israeli side’s response to it with the “Iron Swords Operation ”. The Egyptian leadership stressed the necessity of addressing the root causes of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, as a solution to confront the ongoing escalation between the Palestinian and Israeli sides, and this goal was the focus of “El-Sisi” and Shukry’s discussions with both Austrian Chancellor “Karl Nehammer”, German Chancellor Olaf Schulz, European Council President Charles Michel, French President Emmanuel Macron, and British Foreign Secretary “James Cleverly”, in addition to President El-Sisi’s assurance to European officials that Egypt will continue to conduct intensive contacts with the Israeli and Palestinian sides and international and regional actors, in order to contain the current escalation.
Egypt also confronted the plan of the banned terrorist Muslim Brotherhood organization in Egypt to (resettle Palestinians in Sinai), in addition to the regional and international movements made by the Egyptian leadership during the past few days. It warned, at the same time, of attempts by the Israeli Brotherhood to revive the plan to resettle Palestinians from the Gaza Strip in Sinai. This is a plan that the Egyptian state has always rejected, and was revealed by Egyptian security sources to the Cairo News Channel on October 10, by forcing the Israeli occupation government to force the Palestinians to choose between two options: either death under bombing or displacement outside their lands, in light of its continuous attempts since the outbreak of the war. The struggle to settle the people of Gaza in Sinai, as Palestinian President “Mahmoud Abbas” previously revealed in his statements in May 2018, by aborting the Brotherhood’s plan during its rule of Egypt in 2012, which aimed to settle part of the Palestinians in Sinai, within the framework of a project for a Palestinian state with temporary borders.
President “El-Sisi” responded to these attempts, in a speech during his meeting with a number of media professionals after attending the graduation ceremony of a new batch from the Police Academy on October 10, by emphasizing that “Egypt will not allow the case to be settled at the expense of other parties and stressing that the importance of Egypt’s national security and not compromising it under any circumstances”. The main goal is an Egyptian desire for the Palestinians not to leave their lands to the occupying powers.
In light of the attempts of various Egyptian institutions and NGOs to support the Palestinians, led by President “El-Sisi”, the “Hayat Karima” Foundation, after declaring its full solidarity with the Palestinian people and providing support and assistance to them, to confront these difficult circumstances, launched an initiative called “Our Shoulder in the Shoulder of Our People in Palestine”, according to which the Egyptian Charitable Foundation published a number of Decent Life Foundation accounts in Egyptian banks to donate to support the Palestinian people. The “National Alliance for Civil Development Action in Egypt” also announced in a statement on October 10, 2023, that it was working under the directives of President “El-Sisi” to prepare a convoy loaded with huge quantities of humanitarian, food and medical aid to support the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
Based on the above aforementioned analysis, it can be said that Egypt has always demonstrated, through its multiple positions at the regional and international levels, the importance of its role in settling the Palestinian crisis, a role that has placed Egypt at the center of the concerns of world leaders, due to their awareness that it is the Arab country that can convince the Palestinian and Israeli parties to Reducing escalation and achieving calm. Especially in light of Egyptian contacts with external parties to secure humanitarian corridors in Gaza in order for aid to reach the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.