Egypt and Israel – A Widening Gap that Spells More Instability

A recent media kerfuffle provided a stark reminder; the gap between Egypt and Israel has become wider, the relationship between Tel Aviv and Cairo is probably the worst it has been since the Camp David Accords were signed in 1978, and the propensity for further destabilisation remains acute. The consequences for and impact upon regional security should not be underestimated.

On 21 March, the Lebanese newspaper al-Akhbar, known for its proximity to the pro-Iranian militant group Hezbollah, published a report that indicated that Cairo had changed its position on accepting the ‘relocation’ of a quarter of Gaza’s population, which would ‘temporarily’ move to Egypt’s Sinai. Almost immediately, the report went viral in the Israeli press; the Times of Israel, the Jerusalem Post, i24 News and others spread the news like wildfire. The fact that it did is quite telling, for two reasons.

The first reason is that the transfer from Gaza of its Palestinians to Egypt’s Sinai has long been a current idea among some senior members of the Israeli establishment, as has the linkage between Gaza and Sinai in Israeli security paradigms, in order to avert a Palestinian state in the occupied Palestinian Territories (oPT) of East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza.

For example, the Israeli National Security Council Chief in 2004, Giora Eiland, called for ‘persuading’ Egypt to contribute a 600 square kilometer of land from Sinai in order to move Palestinians there. Tellingly, Eiland described Gaza at that time as a ‘huge concentration camp’.

According to the Egyptian president in 2010, Hosni Mubarak, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had proposed settling Palestinians in Sinai, which Mubarak had rejected. In 2017, Israeli Minister Ayoob Kara promoted the idea of ‘A Palestinian State in Gaza and Sinai. Instead of Judea and Samaria’.

Much further back in history, at least as far back as 1956, the idea of providing a Palestinian entity in Sinai, rather than the West Bank and Gaza, was proposed to Egyptian leaders, according to allegations by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. At the same time, nevertheless, Israeli leaders have mostly sought to contain Palestinians in Gaza, rather than expel them en masse. The policy did oscillate, however.

For example, the likes of then-Prime Minister Levi Eshkol combined incentivising Palestinians in Gaza to leave via a specific programme, set up immediately after the 1967 occupation began, with the deliberate maintenance of difficult economic conditions in Gaza at the same time. However, the policy did not continue in quite the same fashion, particularly when it was clear that Palestinians would not leave Gaza en masse, and that those that did, would not be controlled by the Israelis. As Meron Rapoport, one of Israel’s most noted journalists put it, 'Ultimately, Israel’s security establishment reached the conclusion that it was preferable to contain Palestinians in Gaza, where they could be monitored and controlled, rather than to disperse them across the region.'

Since the beginning of the war on Gaza in October 2023, the goal posts have shifted, with some Israeli politicians calling for Palestinians to leave Gaza altogether and move to Sinai en masse, and calls to expel Palestinians becoming increasingly mainstream.

Eiland, who continues to be a prominent commentator, wrote that one of Israel’s objectives in the war could be that ‘The entire population of Gaza will either move to Egypt or move to the Gulf’. Eiland later proposed a strategy entitled the ‘General’s Plan’, which would have seen Palestinian civilians become ‘legitimate targets’ if they refused to leave the north of Gaza.

Beyond prominent personalities, including government ministers, multiple Israeli institutions, both inside and outside of the state, have consistently proposed the idea of removing Palestinians from Gaza to Egypt. The right-wing Misgav Institute for National Security and Zionist Strategy, for example, published a paper in 2023 proposing the complete evacuation of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip to Egypt, while another proposal in 2023, considered by Israel’s Ministry of Intelligence (a department which was abolished in 2024), recommended forcibly resettling Palestinians from Gaza in Sinai.

More recently, the so-called Riviera Plan of US President Donald Trump has also insisted Egypt would take in Palestinians from Gaza, on a permanent basis, as Gaza is allegedly rebuilt into the ‘Riviera of the Middle East’. The Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu described it as ‘visionary’ and ‘innovative’ when President Trump announced it, and recently referred to it as ‘the plan’, or at least part of it, that Israel is putting into effect. The Riviera Plan is repeatedly being referred to as policy by different Israeli ministers, including within the security cabinet, with the Finance Minister saying they were ‘following the vision of US President Donald Trump’, and the Defence Minister saying that Israel was using ‘all means to implement the vision of the US president’.

In all of these cases, however, the Egyptian authorities rejected the proposals, insisting that Egypt’s territory could not be used as a homeland for Palestinian refugees, and Cairo would refuse to be complicit in the forced removal of Palestinians from Gaza, to Egypt or elsewhere. Cairo considers such a course of action to be one that ‘aims to liquidate’ the Palestinian cause. United Nations’ Secretary General Antonio Guterres also branded President Trump’s idea as potential ethnic cleansing.

That assessment from Cairo has not changed, despite the Akhbar newspaper report in March; the sourcing of the solitary report was dubious, and the Egyptian government denied the claim within a few hours.

Deeper Misunderstandings, and Growing Israeli Hostility

Nevertheless, as noted, the Israeli press hastily spread around the report, and the Israeli Defence Minister reconfirmed Israel’s intention to fulfill the Riviera Plan, threatening Israeli seizure of Gazan territory after Israel failed to proceed with the continuation of the ceasefire-hostage agreement with Hamas. The misreading of Egypt in particular, and the Arab world in general in this regard, remains widespread in Israel.

That gap is not simply between the Trump administration and the Arab world, but more specifically between Tel Aviv and Cairo. It is a peculiar gap, as one might expect there to be more awareness in the Israeli establishment about Egyptian assessments and sensibilities 46 years since the signature of the Camp David peace treaty. However, it is also indicative of a trend within Israel at present that has misread, willfully or otherwise, Egyptian security paradigms. It is a trend that has led to Egypt joining the South African case at the International Court of Justice against Israel on charges of committing genocide in Gaza, despite four decades of the Camp David Accords - and the impacts of this should not be disregarded.

Cairo views the Camp David Accords as the bedrock of regional security architecture, and the ‘foundation of peace’ in the region, as Tamim Khallaf, Egypt’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson, recently put it. This is despite the challenges to the accords, particularly around Israel’s remilitarisation of the Philadelphi Corridor along the Gazan border with Egypt, and Israel’s failure to withdraw from it as required under what was known as ‘Phase One’ of the Hamas-Israel hostage-ceasefire agreement concluded just before President Trump’s inauguration in January.

However, there is a clear trend in Israeli politics that has begun to view Egypt as a problem, a trend linked to a broader shift to the right in Israeli politics over recent years. Yechiel Leiter, the newly-appointed Israeli ambassador to the US, recently accused Cairo of building up military bases in Sinai for offensive operations. And Danny Dannon, the Israeli ambassador to the United Nations, also expressed his own concerns around Egypt, two days later. Former Israeli minister Yuval Steinitz also recently raised the alarm, saying there was ‘definitely reason’ to view recent developments with concern.

Recent Israeli media reports indicate that Netanyahu’s own advisors have been promoting campaigns of this nature, for other political purposes, but not based on factual developments. Such reports around Egyptian building up offensive capacities in Sinai were not substantiated, and some of the accusations made by Israeli officials were subsequently removed from social media platforms. Still, an Israeli trend is emerging that is keen to promote a more adversarial view of Egypt.

Worse May Lie Ahead

There is little doubt that Cairo would respond to any Israeli expulsion of Palestinians into Sinai by substantially remilitarising the peninsula; such knowledge should be part and parcel of any realistic Israeli assessment of Egyptian security calculations. Instead, it seems that Israel has not factored this in at all. Indeed, in different ‘Track Two’ discussions, Israeli interlocutors expressed astonishment at the certainty of such a forceful Egyptian reaction, ideas which any more impartial observer of Egyptian calculations would see as wholly inevitable.

It is clear that the room for constructive discussions between Israel and Egypt has diminished, as the political mainstream in Israel has shifted further to the right. And this leads to two corresponding consequences. The first is the increasing lack of awareness in Israel of how Egypt in particular and the region in general views the current situation, which could set off a dynamic that would be even more destabilising for regional security.

The second outcome is the growth of a type of a new pre-emptive belligerence doctrine in Israeli security thinking which goes beyond Egypt. That trend has escalated not only in Gaza, but in Lebanon and Syria as well, where the maintenance of Israel’s security is at least partially informed by a sense of pre-emption.

In Syria, this has meant the recent occupation of more Syrian territory in addition to the Golan Heights that has been occupied by Israel since 1967; in Lebanon, this has meant the continuation of occupying several points in southern Lebanon, despite the ceasefire agreement that was agreed between the Israelis and the Lebanese.

This new and belligerent pre-emptive doctrine is now impacting even Israel’s discourse on Turkey - Israeli media has reported that Prime Minister Netanyahu apparently advised TV channels to emphasise that a confrontation between Tel Aviv and Ankara is inevitable.

The combination of Israel’s apparent lack of awareness about Egyptian security priorities, coupled with a trend that looks at Cairo more negatively and adopts a ‘precautionary security paradigm’ to all of Israel’s challenges does not bode well for the region.

© RUSI, 2025.

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