Egypt

Saint Catherine’s Monastery of Sinai, perched amid the stark landscape of the Sinai Peninsula, is more than a monument of Christian antiquity. It stands today as a living testament to the enduring spiritual and diplomatic role of Greece within the Orthodox world, a quiet but formidable projection of Greek soft power that resonates across the Eastern Mediterranean and beyond.

A silent beacon of Greek diplomacy

Far removed from the centers of modern diplomacy, the monastery’s Greek-speaking monastic community and steadfast commitment to Byzantine liturgical tradition transform it into a unique spiritual and cultural outpost. It exemplifies the principle that soft power does not always emerge through overt political maneuvering but often through the quiet constancy of spiritual guardianship and cultural authenticity.

This presence enables Greece to project a moral authority and cultural leadership that transcend national boundaries. As a spiritual bridge linking the ancient Patriarchates of Alexandria, Jerusalem, and Constantinople, the monastery fosters relationships of trust and mutual respect, relationships built not on political expediency but on the bonds of faith and tradition. This role is particularly significant in an era marked by shifting alliances and the increasing entanglement of religious and geopolitical interests.

Through the Monastery, Greece affirms its position as a custodian of Orthodox heritage and as a stabilizing force in the region. Its spiritual authority and cultural resonance serve as subtle yet powerful tools of statecraft, enabling Greece to foster dialogue, unity, and a sense of continuity within the Orthodox landscape.

The challenge of the Russian Exarchate

The relevance of the monastery’s soft power role has grown even more pronounced in recent years, as new challenges emerge within the Orthodox world. Foremost among these is the creation of the Russian Patriarchal Exarchate of Africa, an assertive move by the Russian Orthodox Church to expand its jurisdiction into territories historically aligned with the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Alexandria.

Although this development does not directly involve Saint Catherine’s Monastery, it reshapes the broader Orthodox environment, highlighting the use of ecclesiastical structures as instruments of geopolitical influence. The Russian initiative underscores how religious identity and geopolitical strategy have become deeply intertwined—posing challenges for Greece as it seeks to maintain a stabilizing and mediating role within Orthodoxy.

For Greece, this underscores the urgency of preserving the monastery’s autonomy and Greek character. It is a reminder that spiritual heritage can be both a shield and a platform for diplomatic engagement. a means of counterbalancing external interventions that risk deepening divisions within Orthodoxy.

A strategic spiritual outpost for a fractured world

Saint Catherine’s Monastery thus emerges as a linchpin in Greece’s ecclesiastical diplomacy, a discreet yet resilient bastion of Hellenic presence and Orthodox unity. Its continued independence is not merely a matter of cultural preservation; it is a strategic necessity. In a region where spiritual and geopolitical rivalries increasingly overlap, the monastery’s enduring witness to faith and Greek identity becomes a vital asset for Athens.

The recent diplomatic initiatives, including the visit of Foreign Minister George Gerapetritis to Egypt, underscore this recognition. By reaffirming its commitment to the monastery’s unique status, Greece sends a broader message that it remains a quiet but influential actor, leveraging spiritual heritage to foster stability and to protect the fragile balance of the Orthodox world.

Saint Catherine’s Monastery is far more than a relic of the past. It is a living expression of Greece’s diplomatic and spiritual mission in the Orthodox East, a mission that transcends temporal concerns and speaks to the heart of Hellenic identity. Amid emerging challenges such as the Russian Exarchate and broader regional volatility, the monastery’s quiet testimony to spiritual continuity and Greek cultural presence affirms Greece’s enduring mission: to serve as a custodian of Orthodoxy and as a bridge of stability in a fractured world.

In the lexicon of modern diplomacy, Saint Catherine’s Monastery stands as both a symbol and an instrument—projecting an image of a nation that values spiritual heritage, cultural authenticity, and the deep bonds of Orthodoxy that connect peoples across borders.

The Sudanese Armed Forces say they have withdrawn from the area as part of its ‘defensive arrangements’.

Sudan’s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) have said their fighters have seized a strategic zone on the border with Egypt and Libya, as the regular government-aligned army, the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), announced its withdrawal from the area.

The announcements on Wednesday came a day after SAF accused forces loyal to eastern Libyan commander Khalifa Haftar of launching a cross-border attack alongside the RSF, the first allegation of direct Libyan involvement in the Sudanese war.

“As part of its defensive arrangements to repel aggression, our forces today evacuated the triangle area overlooking the borders between Sudan, Egypt and Libya,” army spokesperson Nabil Abdallah said in a statement.

بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم

القيادة العامة للقوات المسلحة

تعميم صحفي

الأربعاء ١١ يونيو ٢٠٢٥م

في إطار ترتيباتها الدفاعية لصد العدوان، أخلت قواتنا اليوم منطقة المثلث المطلة علي الحدود بين السودان ومصر وليبيا.

(نصر من الله وفتح قريب)

مكتب الناطق الرسمي باسم القوات المسلحة

General… pic.twitter.com/3o5Z1xDfb0

— القوات المسلحة السودانية (@SudaneseAF) June 11, 2025

Since April 2023, the brutal civil war has pitted SAF chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan against his erstwhile ally Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, who leads the RSF, in a bitter power struggle.

In a statement on Wednesday, the RSF said its fighters had “liberated the strategic triangle area”, adding that army forces had retreated southward “after suffering heavy losses”.

SAF said on Tuesday that Haftar’s troops, in coordination with the RSF, attacked its border positions in a move it called “a blatant aggression against Sudan”.

Sudan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs also accused the United Arab Emirates of backing the assault, describing it as a “dangerous escalation” and a “flagrant violation of international law”.

It also described the latest clash as part of a broader foreign-backed conspiracy.

Haftar, who controls eastern Libya, has long maintained close ties with both the United Arab Emirates and Egypt.

While Cairo has supported Sudan’s leadership under Burhan since the war began in April 2023, Khartoum has repeatedly accused the UAE of supplying the RSF with weapons, which the Emirati government has denied.

Tensions between Khartoum and Abu Dhabi escalated in May after drone strikes hit the wartime capital of Port Sudan for the first time since the outbreak of the war.

After the attacks, Sudan severed its diplomatic ties with the UAE and declared it an “aggressor state”.

Since the war began more than two years ago, multiple countries have been drawn in. It has effectively split Sudan in two, with SAF holding the centre, east and north, including the capital Khartoum, while the paramilitaries and their allies control nearly all of Darfur and parts of the south.

The fighting has killed tens of thousands and displaced 13 million, including four million who fled abroad, triggering what the United Nations has called the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.

Efforts by international mediators to halt the fighting have so far failed, with violence continuing to escalate across the western Darfur region and the Kordofan region in the country’s south.

Thousands of activists from across the globe are marching to the Gaza Strip to try to break Israel’s suffocating siege and draw international attention to the genocide it is perpetrating there.

Approximately 1,000 people participating in the Tunisian-led stretch of the Global March to Gaza, known as the Sumud Convoy, arrived in Libya on Tuesday morning, a day after they departed the Tunisian capital, Tunis. They are now resting in Libya after a full day of travel, but do not yet have permission to cross the eastern part of the North African country.

The group, which mostly comprises citizens of the Maghreb, the Northwest African region, is expected to grow as people join from countries it passes through as it makes its way towards the Rafah crossing between Egypt and Gaza.

How will they do it? When will they get there? What is this all about?

Here’s all you need to know:

Who’s involved?

The Coordination of Joint Action for Palestine is leading the Sumud Convoy, which is tied to the Global March for Palestine.

In total, there are about 1,000 people, travelling on a nine-bus convoy, with the aim of pressurising world leaders to take action on Gaza.

Sumud is supported by the Tunisian General Labour Union, the National Bar Association, the Tunisian League for Human Rights, and the Tunisian Forum for Economic and Social Rights.

It is coordinating with activists and individuals from 50 countries who are flying into the Egyptian capital, Cairo, on June 12, so that they can all march to Rafah together.

Some of those activists are affiliated with an umbrella of grassroots organisations, including the Palestinian Youth Movement, Codepink Women for Peace in the United States and Jewish Voice for Labour in the United Kingdom.

How will they reach the Rafah crossing?

The convoy of cars and buses has reached Libya. After taking a brief rest, the plan is for it to continue towards Cairo.

“Most people around me are feeling courage and anger [about what’s happening in Gaza],” said Ghaya Ben Mbarek, an independent Tunisian journalist who joined the march just before the convoy crossed into Libya.

Ben Mbarek is driven by the belief that, as a journalist, she has to “stand on the right side of history by stopping a genocide and stopping people from dying from hunger”.

Once Sumud links up with fellow activists in Cairo, they will head to El Arish in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula and then embark on a three-day march to the Rafah crossing to Gaza.

Will the activists face obstacles?

The convoy has yet to receive permission to pass through eastern Libya from authorities in the region. Libya has two rival administrations, and while the convoy has been welcomed in the west, discussions are still ongoing with authorities in the east, an official from the convoy told Al Jazeera on Tuesday.

The activists had previously told The Associated Press news agency they do not expect to be allowed into Gaza, yet they hope their journey will pressure world leaders to force Israel to end its genocidal war.

Another concern lies in Egypt, which classifies the stretch between El Arish and the Rafah border crossing as a military zone and does not allow anyone to enter unless they live there.

The Egyptian government has not issued a statement on whether it will allow the Global March to Gaza to pass through its territory.

“I doubt they would be allowed to march towards Rafah,” a longtime Egyptian activist, whose name is being withheld for their safety, said.

“It’s always national security first,” they told Al Jazeera.

If the convoy makes it to Rafah, it will have to face the Israeli army at the crossing.

Why did the activists choose this approach?

Palestine supporters have tried everything over the years as Gaza suffered.

Since Israel’s genocidal war began 20 months ago, civilians have protested in major capitals and taken legal action against elected officials for abetting Israel’s mass killing campaign in Gaza.

Activists have sailed on several humanitarian aid boats towards Gaza, trying to break a stifling blockade that Israel has imposed since 2007; all were attacked or intercepted by Israel.

In 2010, in international waters, Israeli commandos boarded the Mavi Marmara, one of the six boats in the Freedom Flotilla sailing for Gaza. They killed nine people, and one more person died of their wounds later.

The Freedom Flotilla kept trying as Gaza suffered one Israeli assault after another.

Israel’s current war on Gaza prompted 12 activists from the Freedom Flotilla Coalition to set sail on board the Madleen from Italy on June 1, hoping to pressure world governments to stop Israel’s genocide.

However, the activists were abducted by Israeli forces in international waters on June 9.

Will the Global March to Gaza succeed?

The activists will try, even if they are pretty sure they will not get into Gaza.

They say standing idle will only enable Israel to continue its genocide until the people of Gaza are all dead or ethnically cleansed.

“The message people here want to send to the world is that even if you stop us by sea, or air, then we will come, by the thousands, by land,” said Ben Mbarek.

“We will literally cross deserts … to stop people from dying from hunger,” she told Al Jazeera.

How bad are things in Gaza?

Since Israel began its war on Gaza on October 7, 2023, it has strangled the food and supplies entering the Palestinian enclave, engineering a famine that has likely killed thousands and could kill hundreds of thousands more.

Israel has carpet-bombed Gaza, killing at least 54,927 people and injuring more than 126,000.

Legal scholars previously told Al Jazeera the suffering in Gaza suggests Israel is deliberately inflicting conditions to bring about the physical destruction of the Palestinian people in whole or in part – the precise definition of genocide.

Global outrage has grown as Israel continues to kill civilians in thousands, including children, aid workers, medics and journalists.

Since March, Israel has tightened its chokehold on Gaza, completely stopping aid and then shooting at people lining up for what little aid it allows in, leading to rare statements of condemnation from Western governments.

Israel launched a campaign against former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger after he blamed the Israelis for the breakdown of his mission to achieve an interim agreement with Egypt following the 1973 war, according to declassified British documents

The documents, unearthed by MEMO in the British National Archives,  showed that the Israeli government lobbied US Congressmen to turn American opinion against Kissinger, accusing him of “delivering” Israel to Egypt and “humiliating” Israeli ministers.

In late March 1975, Kissinger’s shuttle diplomacy between Israel and Egypt collapsed. Although he initially avoided publicly assigning blame, he privately told his UK counterpart, James Callaghan, that Israeli leaders were primarily responsible. Kissinger argued that the Israelis had “locked themselves into an inflexible position on non-belligerency,” that “wouldn’t allow them to escape”. He also informed his British counterpart that he “warned the Israelis once the step-by-step process had broken down the situation might change rapidly to their disadvantage”.

Egypt publicly declared that Kissinger’s approach had failed due to Israeli intransigence, specifically their insistence on non-belligerency, which Egypt rejected before a comprehensive settlement involving all aspects of the Arab-Israeli conflict, including the Palestinian issue, is reached.

READ: Saddam ‘used’ Jordan’s King Hussein against Egypt ahead of Kuwait invasion, UK documents show

Following the breakdown, the administration of President Gerald Ford began a comprehensive reassessment of its Middle East policy. The US National Security Council (NSC) informed the British embassy that the review “will be far reaching and will include an examination of military and economic assistance to Israel” and focusing on “principles underlying US policy rather than on tactical considerations”.

Although the Ford Administration avoided publicly blaming either party, US media reports suggested that Kissinger viewed Israel as primarily responsible for the failure. This impression was reinforced when it was revealed that President Ford had sent a strongly worded letter to Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, criticising Israel’s inflexibility before the breakdown of the negotiations.

British Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) files show that the US NSC told British Ambassador Peter Ramsbotham “in confidence” that Ford’s message to Rabin had been “very tough” and had referred critically to Israeli stubbornness during the negotiations.

Ramsbotham reported that while the Israeli embassy denied “in the strongest possible terms” any responsibility for the failed talks, support for Israel in the US “will come under increasing critical scrutiny.”

Relations between Kissinger and Israel deteriorated further. British Ambassador to Israel William B. J. Ledwidge observed increasing distrust toward Kissinger in the Israeli press, a sentiment he believed was encouraged by Israeli leaders. Ledwidge reported the relations were “in the process of becoming distinctly worse than the relations between Israel and the United States administration”. He assessed that this was “clearly inspired by briefing from Israel’s leaders”.

In a highly secret report, Ledwidge noted that the Israelis were “making no secret of the fact that Kissinger is angry with them for their stubbornness in the recent negotiations and President Ford agrees with him”.

After talking to “enough of well-informed” Israelis, Ledwidge concluded that Israel’s leaders were “worried by the strength of the disapproval which is being expressed by Washington”. “In the present situation the fact of Kissinger’s anger with Israel is perhaps more important than the justice of accusations against them”, the ambassador added.

Leon Dulzin, then treasurer of the Jewish Agency and a Likud leader, also complained to the ambassador that there as “very little negotiation” during Kissinger’s shuttle accusing the top US diplomat of aiming at “persuading the Israelis to give Sadat what he wanted”. Dulzin, a former Israeli cabinet minister and trusted by leading Zionists overseas, added that Kissinger “had never really accepted the proposition that Israel was entitled to any price in return beyond a continuation of American economic and military aid and general goodwill”.

A satirical drawing showing Israel pandering to Henry Kissinger of the United States while Egypt’s President Sadat gets away with the oil rich Sinai desert. [David Rubinger/CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images]

An Israeli source close to Rabin told the ambassador that the Israeli prime minister believed that Kissinger “had tried to deliver the Israelis to Sadat” and he (Kissinger) “had become angry when he found that it would not work”. Rabin came to the conclusion that “he only wished he could talk directly to the Egyptians” without Kissinger’s go-between.

At a dinner with visiting US Congressmen, Shimon Peres, then Israel’s defense minister, accused Kissinger of “humiliating” him, complaining that he played role in delaying his important visit to the US. Peres asked the Congressmen to “say as much (about Kissinger claimed behaviour) when they returned to Washington”.

Another player was Yehoshua Rabinowitz, then Israeli minister of finance who was also informed by Washington that he must postpone his visit to discuss economic aid yet once more. Sources told the UK ambassador that Rabinowitz understood that he will not be received until the re-assessment of American Middle East policy was completed. Rabinowitz detected the “hand of Kissinger in the repeated delays of his mission”, the sources said.

The dispatches from the British embassy in Tell Aviv indicated that the Israelis were talking “as if they were convinced that Kissinger himself is the chief organiser of the present wave of American displeasure which has reached such heights”.

Senior official in Israeli Foreign Ministry Yeshayahu Anug strongly criticised Kissinger in a conversation with the UK ambassador. He said “for the first time we saw him (Kissinger) behaving like a Jew”. Anug argued that when the shuttle went wrong, Kissinger “behaved as if he had been personally betrayed by the Israelis and lost his cool completely”.

In his assessment, the ambassador concluded that many Israelis “feel that the Zionist State does indeed irritate Kissinger”.

The documents also reveal that some Israeli figures questioned Kissinger’s personal attitude toward their country. According to Ledwidge, the Israelis who knew Kissinger believed when Israel was founded in 1948, he regarded it as “an aberration that could not be last”. They acknowledged that he changed his mind later. But Kissinger had been criticised because since the 1967 war, he has always been convinced that Israel “would be obliged to evacuate all the territories she had occupied as a result of the pressure of international opinion”.

READ: Sheikh Zayed lacked faith in US protection of allied Arab leaders during difficult times, British documents reveal

An account of a secret briefing Kissinger gave to Jewish leaders in December 1973 showed him making harsh comments about Israel’s military performance during the Yom Kippur War and emphasising the limits of US support.

According to this account, shown to the British ambassador by an Israeli diplomatic official “in strict confidence”, Kissinger “was brutally unsympathetic to Israel throughout his briefing”.  He was quoted as saying “Israel had lost the Yom Kippur war strategically and that even if she had surrounded and defeated the Third Egyptian Army, she would not have reversed the verdict”.

“If there were another war, the US might not be able, even if she were willing; to mount an airlift and Israel might fare worse than she had in 1973”. He even accused Israelis of “misleading the Americans about their military plans during the latter part of the war”.

In a separate dispatch, the British embassy in Washington reported that Kissinger “has suspected for months that the Israelis were casting him for the role of “fall guy”. The British ambassador to Tel Aviv commented that “no doubt the Israelis have had for a long time past a contingency plan for doing precisely this’ and perhaps they “have now reached the point of putting it into effect”.

British diplomats in London concluded that while the Israelis had reasons to criticise Kissinger, they were mistaken to view his actions as motivated by personal animosity. Instead, they believed that Kissinger’s pressure aimed to avoid another conflict that “would ultimately damage Israel and the West more than the Arabs”. As seen by Michel S Weir, Assistant Under-Secretary and director of Middle East and North Africa, Israel considered the pursuit of this major objective and any final settlement, which would involve it giving up most of the foreign territory she is occupying, as “personal spite”. This was considered as a “measure of the chasm that separates Israeli thinking from that of the outside world”.  In as much as the Israelis had accepted the idea of withdrawal, Kissinger was “surely entitled to feel betrayed, Weir concluded.

READ: Kissinger, Ford outraged by Israel humiliating the US in the eyes of Arabs, British documents reveal

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.