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Episode 42: Why is Egypt so scared to open its border with Gaza? with Mariam Wahba
00:56:02
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- [00:00]
A
Foreign welcome to Ask Khabiv anything. Apologies if the sound isn't great. I'm on the road. I'm in Toronto and we're working on improving sound while on the road. This is a fascinating episode that I've been waiting for. We have with us Mariam Wahba, who, well, we'll get into who she is and why she is a great resource to turn to when we want to answer a question asked by a great many of our viewers, of our listeners, of our Patreon subscribers. What the heck is happening to Egypt? Where is Egypt going? There's some signals that, you know, the giant gas deal signed with Israel, regional integration, the peace treaty is very much still in effect. At the same time, we've seen more and more Egyptian officials talk about the possibility of coming war with Israel, no less. And we've seen 60,000 troops in the Sinai, a buildup that is absolutely a violation of the 1979 peace treaty. And so there are many different things. We're, of course, of course, going to talk about Gaza, which shares a border with Egypt, and how Egypt has handled that border. But we're also going to get into Egyptian society itself and how to read Egypt, so to speak, how to understand where it's going. I'm very excited to get into it. This is a country with roughly 100 million population, the most populous Arab nation. You cannot understand the Middle east without understanding it. The fact that it is not currently engaged in major wars kind of sets it to the side and people don't really focus and think about it. But then you're missing a lot of the core of what's happening in the Middle East. So we're going to dive into it. I'm very glad Maryam is here to talk about it. Before we do, I want to tell you that this episode is sponsored by Jason and Loreal Klinghoffer. And they have asked, as many sponsors do, to honor the memory of somebody using their sponsorship and in this case, to honor the memory Viola Nishinsky and Sarah Milgram, two Israeli embassy staffers who were murdered in Washington, D.C. on May 21, 2025. They were fatally shot outside the Capitol Jewish Museum after attending an event for young diplomats. They were also a couple. They were planning to get engaged. They were just young, promising individuals with their whole lives ahead of them. May their memory be a blessing. Before we move on, we have a Patreon community I urge you to join has in it stimulating debates. We take episode suggestions from that Patreon community We'd be happy to See you there. Maryam, how are you?
- [02:46]
B
I am well. So good to be with you today. Thanks for having me.
- [02:50]
A
It's especially poignant to have an episode dedicated to Yalon and Salah because you were a good friend of Yalon and you actually wrote an obituary for him after he was murdered. Can you tell us a little bit about your friendship with him and your connection?
- [03:08]
B
My pleasure. It's a heavy place to start today, but I'm glad we're starting here. And it's really my honor to be with you today and to honor your own and Sarah's memory. Your own was a good friend of mine. And when the news started pouring in the Free Press, Bari Weiss was kind enough to, let me, I guess, grief publicly in the free press by. By writing this obituary for your own. And he was one of my very first friends I made when I first moved to D.C. a couple of years ago. And he and I had a lasting friendship that, you know, went through so many things, two of which are obviously the many Coptic Christian attacks that happened in Egypt and then the October 7th attack. And, you know, we were friends in many dimensions. We had laughs, and we would argue over gin and tonics about early Christian theology. But we also were there for each other under really tough circumstances. And I remember the night before the news was confirmed, I was, you know, doing my last doom scroll of the night on Twitter on X, and I started seeing early reports of an incident involving, you know, Israeli embassy staffers. And my first thought as I was dozing off that night was, you know, I'll text Jeroen tomorrow morning. He'll know what happened. At that point, we hadn't really known what the incident was. It was just being reported as an incident. And then the next morning, doing my first doom scroll of the day, I open X, and the first thing I see is a picture of Jeroen. And before reading anything, I just. I knew. So Jaron was a wonderful man, a diplomat par excellence. And I hope through any of my work, I can do something to honor his life and his memory.
- [04:51]
A
Tell us your story. It's not an accident that you occasionally engage in debates on early Christian theology. What is your story? And you come from the Coptic community of Egypt. So how did you get to where you are today? Get to D.C. your connection with the community? Tell us about that.
- [05:12]
B
Yeah, so my family's from Egypt. I am Egyptian by birth, American by choice, and a whole lot of luck. My family immigrated to the United States many years ago, and we've been here since I Studied Middle east history at Fordham University here in New York. And people always ask me, why Middle east history? It was the only thing that I could identify on the list of majors I was provided that I can connect to in any way. I mean, they give you the list when you're a freshman, and, you know, there's like, feminist studies and ethnic studies, and I have no idea what those are. I don't think anybody really does. But I saw Middle east studies, and I was like, oh, I know what that place is. From there, family there. I speak Arabic. Let's see what Fordham University has to say about it. And I came to really be enchanted with particularly Israel early on in my college career. And that's how I got to work on policy. It started with trying to understand the Jewish state and its relationship with the rest of the Arab world and its relationship with the rest of the world, really, and then getting a little bit more in depth into understanding my native country and how it engages not only with its regional neighbors, but the entire world. I'm also Coptic. Disclaimer at the very beginning, I belong to the Coptic Christian community. Coptic Christians are the indigenous Christian people of Egypt. When I say the word Egypt, there's kind of two images that come into people's minds. One, if you've been to Egypt recently on a family vacation, you think of Sinai and Shanm El Sheikh and Al Arda and, you know, all those beachy resorts. And the other images, you know, the ancient pharaohs and the pyramids and the Sphinx. And I think of the Coptic people as kind of the connection between those two worlds. The hieroglyphics and the ancient Egyptians didn't just, whoosh, disappear overnight. And the modern nation state of Egypt didn't just appear overnight. In 40 to 60 AD, you had St. Mark the Evangelist travel to Egypt. It's actually how he got his name, the evangelist. And he began to evangelize to the ancient Egyptians. And because the ancient Egyptian people had a similar idea of forgiving God and a peaceful afterlife to Christianity, they began to convert en masse. And over the next few decades, Egypt was actually a predominantly orthodox Christian nation. Some numbers put it as high as 85%. Egypt was a majority Christian country. And then you had the Arab invasion in the 6th and 7th century. And then the native Egyptian population had a couple of different choices. You could convert, you can die at the sword, or you can pay a jizya, which was essentially a tax to be able to practice your own religion. And the surviving Coptic community today are descendants of those who survived by paying a jizya or through another means of hiding who they were so that they would be able to live as dhimmis under Islamic rule. And persecution has varied over the next few centuries. There have been times of high tension and times of low tension. And I'm happy to kind of get into those tangents further into our conversation, kind of give you an update on where we stand with regards to how the modern Arab Republic of Egypt treats its minority communities, including the Coptic Christian community.
- [08:42]
A
Well, let's dive into it. What is the state currently of Egypt's Coptic community? How are they treated? How are they doing? How are they surviving? Every once in a while they make the international press essentially because of some terrible terror attack against them. What is going on with that?
- [08:57]
B
Okay, great place to start. Coptic Christians. So the last decade has been a particularly interesting time for Egypt's Coptic Christians. So Egypt's Coptic Christians are somewhere between 10 and 20%, 10 to 15, 20% of the population. And we're looking at a population of about 115,120 million people, certainly the most populous Arab country by far in the Middle East. So they're not as small in numbers per se, but they are smaller in percentage, I believe, after the Kurdish people. The Coptic Christian numbers make it the largest, the second largest, I guess, minority group in the region and the largest Christian minority group in the region under Mohammed Morsi, who is the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood president that came to power in the immediate aftermath of the Arab Spring Tahrir revolution. Things were rough, reasonably so, under a Muslim Brotherhood Islamist government. And I remember Pope Twadrus at the time, kind of the de facto leader of the Coptic people, said in hindsight after Morsi was toppled that this was a bloody period in Egypt's history and there's been some really horrific incidences during that time. Since then, we've had President Sisi Abdel Fattah Al Sisi come to power and things have looked a little bit different. We're now coming up on year 11, I believe, of Sisi's term since the Arab Spring. And different years have. And different time slots have looked a little bit different. And I'll speak a little bit about this most recent, let's say two years. The Egyptian state, I believe, has every reason to protect the Egyptian Christian population, mainly because it's a really good litmus test for Egypt. If the minority communities, particularly the Coptic Christians, are doing well, meaning not getting attacked, they're thriving. It means the Egyptian society as a whole is doing pretty well. And when The Coptic community is not doing great, meaning there's more Islamist attacks. Churches are being burned, girls and women are being kidnapped en masse. It means that the larger population's also not doing well because they're the ones perpetrating these crimes. I think where there's a gap in how the Egyptian state treats its Christian populations or how it thinks about its engagement with its Christian population is a culture of impunity that is deeply embedded amongst all ranks of the foreign services, of the police. And when I talk about this culture of impunity, I mean bad things happen, right? Islamist attacks do happen, whether they're by organized Islamist groups or by random perpetrators. Like the awful incident we are watching unfold in Jerusalem this morning. So. So there's no, you know, one clear way in which attacks against cops happen. Where things go wrong is where the Egyptian state does not see a need to punish those who commit those crimes for a number of reasons. The one they'll give you on the record is they fear that if you punish somebody who acts against the Christians, you're going to upset the majority of the population for that attack. And that really hurts the Coptic community because you have things like attacks on Christian women, kidnappings that go with virtually no attention given to them. Coptic churches get burned and instead of arresting perpetrators and throwing them in jail and trying them properly, they're forced. And what is commonly known as reconciliation sessions. So you take the perpetrator of an arson attack, secretarian fueleds arson attack, and you take the victims, the Coptic community, and you put them in the room and you force them to get along well. And that's not really how punishment is supposed to work in my book at least.
- [12:49]
A
There are surveys of Egyptian society where Egyptians are asked, do you support Sharia law? The bottom line is the vast majority of Egypt's Muslims support Sharia law as the law of the land. And huge numbers, I think it was almost half, want to apply it to non Muslims as well. When the Muslim Brotherhood affiliated political party ran in an election, it got 40% of the vote, with other Islamist parties getting additional. I don't know what it was, 20 points, something like that. There's huge support in Egypt, in Egyptian soc among this 110,115 million population for a version of Islam that is relatively intolerant in a sense, you know, Sisi is a cork and trying to hold back what is basically this very, very deep conservative radical, which makes sense in the context of Muslim Brotherhood Islam kind of society. Are you afraid for the future of Coptic Christianity In Egypt, it's 10% of the population, but it's, you know, it runs afoul of the most prevalent political impulses of the Egyptian population, as far as we can measure them.
- [14:10]
B
Yeah, absolutely. I'll give you a great example of, of you hitting the nail on the head and saying Sisi is a cork. So back in the 60s, some people might know that movie culture, cinema is a big part of Egyptian culture. Some of the biggest movies coming out of the Arab world are the Egyptian movies, Egyptian music in particular. So it's, it's a great pulse to take on Egyptian society. What's playing in theaters? And I believe it was the 60s or 70s, there was this really popular movie called Hasan Omaros Wi Eli. So Hasan is a Muslim name, Morus is a Coptic Christian name and Eli is a Jewish name. And it was a very popular movie and it talked about kind of the three Abrahamic religions living side by side. And it was a politically and socially sensitive movie, but it was one playing in theaters and that tells you that much. And then in the early 2000s, the movie was remade, but it was just Hassan and Moroz. So just the Muslim and the Christian. Eli was axed from the movie and the title and the joke being that the next movie that will be made will just be called Hassan. So slowly we're eroding away at some of the most fundamental elements of a pluralistic, culturally tolerant fabric of Egyptian society. Am I afraid for the future of the Coptic people? Absolutely. I mean, I think being a non Muslim living under an Islamic majority country, there's always fear, whether it be in the 60s where things were semi decent to now, I don't think that fear evaporates overnight. It's really a systemic cultural change that needs to happen. When I think about Sisi being kind of the cork, there's a couple ways to think about this. Obviously, Sisi came into power toppling a Muslim Brotherhood government. He has been adamant in his pursuit of making sure that Muslim Brotherhood influence and infrastructure and TV channels and media empires are crumbling. And I do have to, you know, tip my hat to the Egyptian state for doing what is considered a decent job on cracking down on the Muslim Brotherhood. And there's been developments on that front that we can get to in a few minutes. I think to really understand Egypt, you have to understand two things. It's a Muslim majority country and of course it doesn't shock me that something like 40% of the population wants an Islamic state or really an Muslim style state. Egyptians are generally pretty liberal because of the history of Egypt, it was a cosmopolitan country, and it had cosmopolitan cities where Jews, Armenians, Greeks, everybody kind of lived and existed alongside each other. I think in the last few decades, we've seen more of a push towards Islamization because Egypt has not been doing well. And I think when people. I'm certainly not a radicalization expert, but when I think of patterns and pattern recognitions, you look at the times when Egypt is not doing well economically and it's generally not doing well socially. And I think there's a relationship there between how regular Egyptians look at how they want their state to interact with a regular citizen compared to how they are doing politically and socially. Can an Egyptian put bread on the table? Are their wages being paid out? Are their kids able to afford school? Can people go to higher education? These are all really important questions to a society that has been primarily educated and primarily looking to the west for a lot of things. And that's changing because of the fact that in the wake of the Arab Spring, Egyptians were promised so much, and none of it, 11 years later, has been delivered on. And, you know, people argue sometimes that Egypt is far worse off now than it was before the Arab Spring. And I think that's a. I would certainly entertain that argument.
- [18:18]
A
Speaking of movies, I remember seeing an Egyptian movie, a wonderful, beautiful movie that spoke to some of this, because it was all about the drama of a young man living on a roof. There's a tremendous housing crisis in all of urban Egypt as rural Egyptians move to the cities. And the roofs of Egyptian are basically rented out, where people live in what are essentially shacks or tents. And it's a whole society living on roofs beyond the sight of people down in the street. And they're day laborers, essentially, in the big cities. And it was a romance about him finding a girl who doesn't live on a roof. She lives in a nice apartment. And there was a whole social class thing in this movie. Poverty in Egypt is measured in many different ways, but it's probably below the poverty line, is probably a third of Egyptian society. And that itself hides a lot, a lot of additional problems because the country is bankrupt, because public debt is soaring. All kinds of caps on the economy, like rent caps, are being lifted with these new reforms. And rent is going up and is expected to go up further. And this is in a country where a great many people in cities are already living on roofs to avoid rent they can't afford by having a roof over their head. There is extreme poverty in surprisingly large corners of Egypt. And so if we you know, and there are many other measures. Female genital mutilation has been done to 87%, according to international studies of the UN and others, of Egyptian women. And that's a measure now. That's a measure. It's a kind of measure. Egypt is a country that it is not crazy at all, even remotely to be wondering about whether it will not collapse economically, socially. And if it does collapse, I hesitate to compare it to Syria because Syria is much less a coherent nation than Egypt is. But what happened to Christians in Syria, okay, to cut to the chase, is that the civil war begins in 2011 and it's essentially an intra Islamic war. It's a war between Alawis and Al Qaeda type Islam and different, you know, Sunnis versus all these different Christians. In 2011, at the start of the civil war were 10% of the Syrian population. And this is one of the oldest Christian communities in the world, like the Coptic Christians of Egypt. And they're today less than 2% now by and large. They weren't murdered like the Sunnis were mass murdered. They mostly just ran the hell away. And so the question for me is, you know, is that kind of collapse. Egypt isn't quite the same in the same way a country with many different tribes set against itself the way Syria is, because Egypt's a coherent country, whereas Syria was invented by the French basically. But nevertheless a collapse that is visible in the data, it's imaginable in the data. Would the cops flee? That's the nightmare scenario. But just looking at data, I can't help thinking I don't want to be there 20 years from now watching this happen. This is potentially a tragedy we can imagine.
- [21:31]
B
Yeah. And okay, what? Great question. I think there's a lot to unpack here, if I may. Let me start with the population because I think your point about the roofed housing and a really sharp increase in younger populations is an important part of understanding Egyptians demographic and how they think about the future. Egypt has had a tremendous increase in population over the last decade. In particular, I believe in the last nine or so years added 15 million people in population. And that's a huge amount of people to add. A couple years ago, maybe more than a couple years ago, I was in Cairo and you know, seeing some of the state sponsored campaigns, they had all these posters and billboards across Cairo, you know, things for like vaccinations and social programs. And I remember this one struck me quite viscerally. The Egyptian government had begun a campaign and named it Wahad Kafaya, which is Arabic for one is enough. And it was essentially the government's way of saying one is enough. Trying to convince the Egyptian population to just have one child as opposed to five or six or 12. And I think it was a poignant moment for me because it was about 10 or 12 years ago that the Egyptian government had sight on this issue, knew it was going to become a much larger one, yet they couldn't stop it because we're still seeing this population growth. The chart is still going up. There's no end in sight for this population crisis for Egypt. And I think in large part the economic crisis, the debt crisis, the housing crisis is all as a result of this population crisis. And people ask me like why? I mean, I don't have an answer that isn't just Egyptians have lots of kids. But I can explain it away by talking about the culture of Egypt and what it means to have lots of children both in Islam. I find it that it's more prominent among the Muslim population of Egypt than the Christian population. And that can also speak to the population decline of the Coptic community. But it certainly is a very sore spot for the Egyptian state as it looks forward to the next 10 to 12 years. So now back to your question about cops fleeing. The interesting thing about the cops is that they're the indigenous people of Egypt. So sometimes when I think about other Christian communities across the Middle east while they've been there for hundreds of years, whether it's the Assyrians or the Armenians or any other population, they have had some sort of movement, even if it's intra country for their people. The Coptic people are unique in that they have been Egyptian since the dawn of time. They are quite literally descendants of the ancient Egyptians and they know nothing else. There's been a spike in immigration out of Egypt since probably the 70s as a result of so many things. And there's huge diaspora populations across the world. Here in the U.S. new York, Washington, California, they have large Coptic diaspora communities. We actually have several Copts serving in high ranks of the current US administration in the White House, across different government facilities all over the us so when you ask me, is there a world where the Coptic people have to flee Egypt? It's a really hard question for me to answer because I can't extract from myself from it personally. Thinking about a Coptic exodus from Egypt is unimaginable. Is there a world where Egypt is in such a dire situation where everybody has to leave, not just the cops? Absolutely. But if I were to digress one more time, you'll have to forgive me, Aviv, you know, if Egypt fails or if Egypt collapses. I think that's such a far fetched question. Only because the world, and particularly the Gulf neighbors of the Egyptian state do not see that as an option. And what I mean by that is over the last five or six years in particular, we've seen the Gulf states, the Emiratis and the Saudis in particular really engage with Egypt. And when I say engage, I mean give them a crapload of money. That's a technical term, to make sure that the economy does not collapse. And they are heavily invested in Egypt in a way that they don't want to be. They don't want to be wiring $5 billion here and $6 billion here. They want to be investing it as opposed to just writing blank checks. But they see the collapse of Egypt, even a small fracture in Egypt, as a catastrophe. Rightly so. I mean, if the Egyptian state collapses in any way, the Middle east would be on fire, quite literally. I mean, you have a population of 120 million people. It is a hotbed for all kinds of extremist groups. Forget about the Muslim Brotherhood for a sec, which would re emerge quite quickly. Sinai has always been a hotbed for ISIS and smaller militant groups. If Egypt collapses, everybody would be in trouble. So both the us, the Gulf partners, I believe Israel has also reason to be invested in Egypt's stability, whatever that role may be. So thinking about Egypt's Collapse is like 10 steps removed for me because I understand that there's very important, powerful players at the table that see that potential or that plausibility as a crisis.
- [27:14]
A
I have been told by an Israeli analyst of these issues that there's a kind of catch 22 for Israel with Egypt because the military, the Egyptian, basically civil war back in 2013 between Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood and Sisi and the army, to the outside, that looks like a battle between two institutions, two movements maybe. But inside Egypt, this person, this Israeli analyst, it was much more comparable to a civil war because the army is very much representative, or sees itself as representative of urban, more modern, more moderate, more nationalist Egypt. Whereas the Muslim Brotherhood is this pan Islamist sort of vision for Egypt that is more conservative, more lower classes, more rural Egypt. And so when the two fight, there are two halves of Egypt fighting. And the concern was of this Israeli analyst, who is very influential also among Israeli strategic planners, that Israel's very glad that the military won that fight against the Muslim brothers. Obviously, Sisi is by far the lesser evil for Israel, but the military owns a Huge percentage of the Egyptian economy, factories, industries, entire industries. And the military is a system in Egypt that is much larger than just a military military that is choking the Egyptian economy. A great many of the structural problems that prevent Egypt from developing better policies and moving forward with a freer and more open and more prosperous and growing economy that can maybe desperately try to catch up or at least not fall too far behind the population growth. A great part of that is the military's own fault. And so the military is both stamping down, tamping down the Islamist impulses and surges that would be taking place in Egypt. Naturally. That's basically where a large part of the population is at. At the same time, the military's own control of Egypt in that way is one of the structural causes of Egypt's instability and inability to actually get on a healthier path forward. And so It's a catch 22. We definitely want the army to win, but we really wish the army would, you know, not be what it is. Right. And so that's an Israeli perspective. I don't know if that's how it looks from the Egyptian side.
- [29:38]
B
That is an apt and accurate analysis in my humble opinion. I think when one thinks about the Egyptian military, they would compare it to their understanding of what a military is supposed to do for their nation. So whether it's the Israelis or Americans, they have very unique, rooted, grounded understandings of a military as the defense element of a state infrastructure, not really a part of the government that is involved in a citizen's day to day life as much as it is for the Egyptian people. The Egyptian military is a behemoth of a machine that owns a large portion of the Egyptian economy, as the analysts aptly pointed out. I mean, think things like hotels, supermarkets, pharmacies, a lot of those are owned by the Egyptian military. And there came so much hope when Sisi first came to power because there was so much promised to the Egyptian people. And it was explicit, right? I watched too many of Sisi's speeches throughout the years and he would go up on a podium and promise the Egyptian people things like demilitarization. He promised to take the Egyptian military out of the everyday lives of Egyptians. And people trusted him because he was the military. I mean, he was the commander of the air Force. He was the military guy that came to save the day in the wake of the Muslim Brotherhood taking power and really fumbling the bag, as the kids say here, and doing an awful job with governance. So when those things weren't followed up on, and I remember this time last year, actually there was this very small report. I think one small newspaper in Egypt was reporting on it. Sisi was reportedly pushing some of the generals within the military, within the Egyptian army to give up a 25% stake in some company that builds chairs or something innocuous like that. And he was getting so much pushback that it didn't end up happening. And the ball was dropped on such a small element of a much larger promise. But it's emblematic of how much the Egyptian military controls the day to day lives of Egyptians. So much so that the actual president can't get the military to give up 25% control of a small factory. So that's really the challenge that Sisi is up against.
- [32:03]
A
Okay, I think we've terrified everybody. This incredibly fragile, potentially powder keg, and this potential powder keg is the most populous Arab state that could just lead to. Right. It's also Egypt as an intellectual ideological furnace where all of these sort of bad ideas are cooked. Right. Hamas, folks, is in 1987 founded in Gaza, a branch of the Muslim Brotherhood of Egypt in Gaza. So, you know, and that's true across the board. A lot of Muslim Brotherhood of Egypt discourses made it to Turkey and are the ideological core of the AKP party of Erdogan. This is what happens in Egypt, never stays in Egypt. And so we're talking about a fragile system that tries to keep the lid on some potentially very bad things that could affect the entire Middle East. And now let's get to Sinai and Gaza. Sisi, back in October 2023, I think within a week and a half of October 7, said that it is possible. This is before Egypt put up that huge fence between Egypt and Gaza. This is before the policy was put in place explicitly to never allow Gazans into Egypt. If the problems in Gaza, the troubles in Gaza, the war in Gaza bleeds into the Sinai and Israel then responds to the Sinai. He says that response could lead to an escalation that could enter Egypt. In other words, Egypt would then get involved in a war in which the side attacking Egyptian soil would be the Israelis. We have since seen, including from a mayor in the northern Sinai, including from various officials in the government in Cairo. Multiple Egyptian officials talk about the possibility of war with Israel publicly to the press. We even saw one video I saw was an official who said to the journalist, ask me about whether war is possible with Israel. And the journalist obediently asked, and then the official said, yes, that fence is enormous. Back in the beginning of 2024, the Egyptians were still talking about the potential of housing some refugees from Gaza for the duration of the war in the Sinai. Then that fence goes up. No, Gazan can leave for two reasons. One, they don't want the Israelis to clear Sinai of Palestinians. That would be right. Ethnic cleansing.
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B
Clear Gaza.
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A
Yes, clear Gaza. What did I say? Yes, clear Gaza. But the second point they make is quietly, more quietly, obviously they really don't want Hamas in Sinai. And if the dozen population pieces of it even were to enter Sinai, Hamas would try to get in on that. Right. And escape to Sinai. And then they have to deal with Hamas themselves, which nobody wants to do. Let the Israelis do it. So we have this belligerent talk. It's accompanied by tens of thousands of troops. One estimate is 60,000, including tanks, M60 tanks of the Egyptian military. All of this is a violation of the peace treaty. The Egyptians think they're going to get away with it. The Israelis are bogged down. They're not going to now what, start a war with Egypt. And we're seeing the beginning of the fraying potentially of the Israeli Egyptian peace treaty. That's with a question mark. Are we just seeing a temporary thing that's going to go away as soon as the Gaza war ends? How should we understand these kinds of maneuvers and this unbelievable saber rattling talk that we haven't seen since 1979?
- [35:30]
B
It's certainly alarming and I think you make several excellent observations about the Egyptian rhetoric. It has not been kind or has not been reflective of the relationship Egypt and Israel have matured into over the last 40 something years. And that's worrying. Certainly there is another angle to view those things and I'm going to present a couple different scenarios here. So stay with me. Don't start throwing tomatoes just yet. I have to take us back to this population. We have 120 million Egyptians, all of which in their psyche have the Palestinian cause as a pillar of who they are as Arabs. The cause of the Palestinians has been such an important element of the Egyptian psyche, the Egyptian state. I mean think about anytime an Egyptian official comes to Washington or a Washington official goes to Egypt. The Palestinian issue even before October 7th was a standing agenda item on any conversations between the US and Egypt. And I think that's really important to understand about Egyptians. They had not forgotten about the Palestinians. They might have forgotten a little bit when the last conflict was in 2020. And they haven't really heard any instances of the Israeli occupation, settler zion of state do anything too bad to the Palestinians. So they might have pushed it aside for just a bit. But since October 7, all that has been on the airwaves in Egypt. And I will shout into the void for years about just how important it is, what is on TV in Egypt and how it shapes the public narrative and how it influences the Egyptian public to pressure their government into acting certain ways. And the airwaves have been nonstop about Gaza and have shown really horrific pictures coming out of Gaza. And that has really shaped the conversation for the first time in years. We're seeing demonstrations on the streets of Cairo. We're seeing journalist unions and other worker unions come out and protest the Egyptian state for not doing enough for their Gazan brethren. And again, stay with me here because I'm trying to explain the complexities. I'm not not underwriting them, I'm not justifying them. I'm just trying to explain. And that has really put an immense amount of pressure on the Egyptian government to entertain a certain rhetoric towards Israel. And they know the costs aren't heavy because they know the Israelis are preoccupied with a much bigger problem at the moment, that they're not going to come after the Egyptians for a slightly fiery rhetoric than they would have a couple of years ago. And what I'm trying to say here, or the picture I'm trying to paint here, is one way to understand the fiery rhetoric of Egypt. Not excusing it, just trying to understand it, is that it is a direct response to the pressure valves that need to go off in Cairo and other cities across Egypt. The Egyptian public is not happy with the Sisi government. Inflation is incredibly high. Employment is soaring. Young people have nothing to do, educated, college degree young people. And they are channeling all of that anger and frustration for the last 15 years of stagnation into this one cause. And the Egyptian state sees it as an opportunity to release the pressure valves, let people get off a little steam, let the Egyptian state and officials come off as grandiose. You know, we're standing up to the Zionist settler regime for our people and no harm, no done, because nobody's actually going to war. We might move some APCs, armored personnel carriers into Sinai, we might move 40 to 60 troops. But it's all part of the posturing. So that is one way to understand a lot of this fiery rhetoric that's been happening. And I can support this argument by saying things like the Egyptian Israel relationship has not tethered too much behind the scenes, despite of what's happening in Gaza. I have it on very good accord that the Egyptians, even despite their Fiery rhetoric in the early days of the war were telling Israel that they must go into Gaza, that they must handle Hamas. Up until this day, Egypt sees Hamas as a threat and understands that the Israelis are the only ones that can handle it and really understand why Israel is moving the way it needs to move in Gaza. And of course, this gas deal that you referenced at the very beginning of the conversation is a good indicator of this understanding of what's happening. I mean, if we were inching toward.
- [40:07]
A
Can you. I'm sorry, just. Can you tell us about the deal and its scale, its significance? We heard a lot of dramatic reporting on it. Why is that deal important and why does it suggest to you that we shouldn't be as worried as the rhetoric suggests?
- [40:23]
B
Absolutely. So this was really a landmark deal between the Egyptian state and an Israeli company. I believe it's called NUMED. $35 billion energy deal to continue and increase the energy import of natural gas from. Excuse me, it might be just generally energy. They didn't specify that it was natural gas from Israeli fields to Egypt. And this is not exactly new because ever since 2020, and it increased again in 2022, the Israelis have been providing Egypt with a lot of energy resources that the Egyptian state direly needs. Growing population means you need to keep the lights on and you need to power some cars and some other apparatuses. I think it is. It could be a very good example for this image I outlined where the Egyptian Israeli relationship has not been tethered as much as one would assume from just the rhetoric that has been going on in recent months and really the last two years since the war. The Egyptian state imports about 15 to 20% of its energy resources. About 60% of that 15 to 20% comes from Israel. So we're talking about a really entrenched dependence of the Egyptian energy sector being dependent on Israel. I don't know about you, but if I was going to a war with a country, I wouldn't exactly commit for the next at least 10 years to getting 60% of my energy from said country I would be threatening to go to war with. Does that make a valid case at least? Am I doing a good job?
- [42:00]
A
You are, and well done. Because you are swimming upstream. Because to the Israeli just the basic history is if they're constantly. It always starts with bombast. It always starts with the dictator trying to show. It always starts with the dictator using Israel to avoid his people ever noticing his own failures. This is the foundation of the Arab invasion of Israel. The preparations for war in 67 the invasion of 73, war after war after war, were always accompanied by this rhetoric. It was always domestic politics. But Israel is this standing insult to Arab honor, to Muslim pride, that allows it to serve in the popular imagination as this kind of foil. And then it always ends in war. In other words, it always actually. In other words, the dynamic of the threatening, of the saber rattling, always collapses into war itself. And if we're looking at a state that is holding on by the skin of its teeth, potentially, we don't actually know how stable the situation is. But a lot of things are in decline, a lot of things are in desperate. And so a collapsed Egypt with a deep wellspring of Muslim Brotherhood ideology and support, that is majority supporting the population, that then has this economic collapse that topples the military regiment regime and also has a massive army in Sinai and also has been talking about the destruction of Israel openly for a decade. You're absolutely right that you could be describing exactly what's happening now. And we should not at all be worried that the Sisi regime will launch a war. But the Sisi regime is not the only factor. The question is, what about three years from now, five years from now, 10 years from now in Egypt, nothing changes until suddenly everything changes.
- [43:50]
B
Absolutely.
- [43:51]
A
And so that's, you know, you are swimming upstream in that sense. I think Israelis are more worried than that. That's the sense I'm getting. There is a sense we just want Egypt to be stable and then everything you're saying is right. That's not a question, just a comment. I don't know what to make of that. And I don't know how to measure whether Egypt is stable.
- [44:09]
B
I completely agree. I think there's too many factors for one human being to sit down and factor all of it in. I think, I think the one thing from missing from all of this that I'm describing to you in this case I'm trying to make is the refugee question. So with your permission, maybe we can shift to that conversation, because I think it's a vital element to understanding where Egypt stands in regards to Sinai, in regards to Israel, and in regards to how it sees the end of the Gaza war.
- [44:38]
A
Yeah, let me tee it up, because here's the way the question runs around in my head. In February 2024, early in the war, Egypt was openly in conversation with the Israelis about potentially moving civilians from certain areas in Gaza into Sinai temporarily. They don't trust the Israelis. All kinds of guarantees, American guarantees, whatever and not whatever. That's what they needed. Great. So they'll get it. And then that would be possible. And then there was a flip, There was an explicit flip, and the flip was total and absolute. And they built a fence that is the largest fence on the Gaza border is not with the, with Israel. The largest fence on Gaza's borders with Egypt. And there was a decision made that if you don't bribe your way out of Egypt by paying off guards, anywhere between two to $10,000 per person, which is a lot of money in Gaza, and. Right. You can't get out. And so that pivot was extreme. It's total. The closure of the Egyptian border is total. And they resist all pressure from the US all pressure from the Israelis to ever open in even a crack. So why, what is happening there?
- [45:54]
B
Okay, so this Gaza relocation refugee question has been, I would say, a nerve of this conflict since the early days of October 2023, and it certainly was one here in Washington. I remember, you know, early days like October 14th, 15th, 16th, we were seeing every talking head here in Washington, New York, talking about how Egypt has to open its borders, have to let Gazans come into Sinai in anticipation of the Israeli offensive. And I think at the time it was a pretty logical idea to have. I mean, you had an attack, the attack was going to launch an offensive. You had civilians, you had a militia that is so deeply embedded into the infrastructure that you needed civilians to escape so that the Israeli offensive would at least have a chance of being a productive and successful one. And I think at the time that made a lot of sense. And had the Washington institutions, had the White House, the Biden White House at the time, done its job of pressuring Egypt to do the right thing and open Sinai for Gazan civilians. That might have been a good idea. I don't want to play too much speculative history here, but it would have, you know, under certain circumstances. Yet Gazan civilians leave Gaza into Sinai, you leave Hamas to fight in Gaza, you have the Israelis come in a much more high probability in my eyes, of a successful offensive. If you're just fighting Hamas in Gaza and not having to deal with 2.16 civilians in an enclave, that didn't happen. And we live in a completely different world. I think where the problem for me happens is now we're two years into the war, we're talking about an end to the war, and people are still making the same point that was valid two years ago and in my opinion, is no longer valid at this point. You have an Egyptian state that has been so riled up both socially and politically, by this conflict. And you're going to expect it to take 2.1 million civilians into an area that is highly sensitive for Egypt. I mean, think about Sinai. Israel took Sinai, Egypt got Sinai back under peace pretenses. But in the Egyptian psyche, I don't know if you know this, there's an Egyptian museum and there's bridges, there's landmarks that commemorate Egypt winning back Sinai, not being given Sinai back, winning it like through battle. And that is a big part of the Egyptian psyche. So Sinai is a very sensitive area for the Egyptian mind and the Egyptian people in that way. So you're talking about moving 2.1 million civilians into Sinai, a place that is sensitive, a place that's really a hotbed for terrorism. And we know Hamas operatives are in there vis a vis the tunnels. I think that has been a non starter for Egypt for really good reasons. I mean, talk about the national security elements of it. If even if you have one Hamas snake sneak into the 2 million civilian populations in that transfer, then you potentially have missiles and whatever else Hamas has left being launched from Egyptian territory into Israel. Talk about catastrophe. Talk about the unfolding of Camp David and the peace treaty, like that would be catastrophic. And then you have an Egyptian economy that is already struggling and you're asking it to deal and absorb 2.1 million civilians in addition to the Syrian civilians that it has as a result of the civil war to the millions of Sudanese civilians that is hosted as a result of the Sudanese civil war. It gets really entangled very quickly for Egypt now two years into the war, as to any good reason or any way that they could sell it to their people. Then you have this anti Semitic state of the Egyptian Arab mind that thinks like the Zionists are out to dissolve the the Palestinian cause. I'm using their words here just for, for dramatic emphasis, if you may. They think Gaza is going to be the beginning of the unraveling of the Palestinian cause and the beginning of the end. Even though one could reasonably argue that it is the beginning of the end of the two state solution as the Arab world sees it. So for those reasons, this laundry list of reasons, the movement of 2.1 civilians into Gaza at the moment is a non starter for Egypt and it's such a red line. Even though the Americans offered money, the Gulfies have offered money, the Gulf is have. I have it on good account that the Gulf is. Have offered to basically help pay off Egypt's debt. I don't have a number for you, but the Egyptian debt is $250 billion. So if somebody's offering to pay off that debt and really relieve a huge amount of pressure from the state, I would at least consider that offer. But because it's such a non starter for the Egyptian public, you just cannot sell it to the Egyptian public people. It's not going to be something Egypt even considers and has repeatedly said this is a red line that the Egyptians will not cross. And I think in a world where a White House and the Israelis really start to shove this down Egypt's throat in any meaningful way, that's when we're really in dangerous territory. That's when we can start having a serious conversation about, God forbid, a war between Israel and Egypt.
- [51:24]
A
That was the most convincing case I have yet heard for not advancing on this front. I am convinced that it is far more difficult than I had thought. I'll maybe even add to it. Over the last 10 years, Egypt has tried many times to face down the ISIS forces in Sinai. And the problem has been that they're embedded in certain Bedouin tribes in the Sinai. And at some point the Egyptian army gave up and set up what is essentially a Bedouin mini state in Sinai headed by a different Bedouin tribe, the biggest and meanest Bedouin tribe. And their job is to keep the ISIS tribes in line. And they're able to do it with zero media coverage. Nobody notices, nobody sees, nobody cares. And they get to control Sinai in exchange, including, you know, some significant piece of smuggling from Egyptian Rafah into, into Gazan Rafah. Right. Which is part of the money making of this new little statelet. So Egyptian control of Sinai is itself a question, a huge question mark. And Hamas has already been able to work with those Bedouin tribes, those ISIS Bedouin tribes in the past. And in fact trained fighters for the Muslim brothers during the civil war in Gaza, hospitalized them in Gaza, sent them back into the fight. So the fear of Hamas infiltrating is not small and not insignificant and very, very serious. So there's a serious Egyptian argument here, you're saying, and it's coming from you, who is a big critic of this Egyptian government and Egyptian policies. So I think that's very significant. How worried are you for the future of Egypt, for the future of Israeli Egyptian peace, for the future of the region? Given the fragility of Egypt that we've talked about, what should we expect going forward?
- [53:16]
B
I like to say that I am foolishly optimistic. There's been little discussion about what the future holds because the Egyptians, and I bet the Israelis don't know what the end of the war looks like. And I think figuring out what the big if, or rather the big answer to that big question is going to determine a lot if I were to do some overarching themes here. I think there has to be a reckoning with how Israel and the US Sees its relationship with Egypt in once all is said and done, once October 7th is the October 7th war is done and we figure out what Gaza looks like post Hamas. And what I mean by that is there's been a lot of coddling of Egypt over the last, let's say, decade by the Israelis, by the Emirati states, the Saudi state, really America in particular. And coddling begets coddling. When you treat a state with so much, with really a lack of accountability and continuing to see it as the cornerstone of peace when it was proven so much is not very much interested in that, it declines and it becomes fragile. And then you have to coddle it some more because you're scared of a collapse, an economic one, a social one, a political one. So there has to be a real reckoning and you know, as former President Biden says, come to Jesus moment with how the regional players in the Middle east see and engage with Egypt and the same thing has to be done with America.
- [54:57]
A
Got it. Okay. So the headline, the takeaway for me is Egyptian Coptic Christian asks Egypt's Muslim Government to come to Jesus Ask. That's what we're going with.
- [55:07]
B
You can quote me on that.
- [55:08]
A
I can quote you on that. No, but I do take away a very serious headline which is don't be so afraid of the collapse that you don't demand in pressure and ultimately obtain from Egypt the kinds of reforms that will actually set it on a new path. Because all we're doing now is, at best, best case scenario, managing the decline. And managing the decline is not something the Middle east can afford for its own good.
- [55:33]
B
Egypt needs to start a new path.
- [55:36]
A
Maryam Wahaba, thank you so much for joining me. You are with the foundation for Defense of Democracies in Washington. That is something I neglected to say. You helped me tremendously to understand what's going on in Egypt and maybe a wise path forward. Thank you so much.
- [55:51]
B
Thank you for having me.