No sooner had Syria’s Bashar al-Assad been toppled – removing, at least for the immediate future, the likelihood of a full-blown war with one of Israel’s most bitter and well-equipped enemies – then all eyes suddenly turned toward Egypt.
That’s right, Egypt, the country with which Israel has maintained a peace agreement for more than 45 years, a peace agreement that has withstood many challenges, not least of which was the last 16 months of war in Gaza.
All of a sudden, seemingly out of nowhere, the media – especially social media – has been flooded with reports of Egyptian military buildups and maneuvers in the Sinai. The developments take on a more ominous tone in light of recent hyperbolic Egyptian rhetoric surrounding US President Donald Trump’s suggestion to relocate Gazans, including to Egypt.
Some of the images circulating show rows and rows of Egyptian tanks and large-scale military drills that go back several years. Nevertheless, they suddenly seem more problematic in light of Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi’s warning that transferring Gaza refugees to Sinai is a “redline” that would threaten Egypt’s national security and could ignite a war with Israel.
Concerns about Egyptian intent received a serious upgrade this week when remarks the new Israeli ambassador to the US, Yechiel Leiter, made to the Conference of Presidents of Major American Organizations on January 28 went public.
Is Egypt going to violate the 1979 peace deal?
“Egypt is in very serious violation of our peace agreement in the Sinai,” he said in a Zoom briefing with the American Jewish leaders. “This is an issue that is going to come to the fore because it’s not tolerable.”
“We have bases being built that can only be used for offensive operations, for offensive weapons – that’s a clear violation,” Leiter said. “For a long time, it’s been shunted aside, and this continues. This is going to be an issue that we’re going to put on the table very soon and very emphatically.”
The Conference of Presidents, which put the recording of the Zoom call online, has subsequently taken it down, as this issue risks becoming a full-blown diplomatic crisis.
On January 30, two days after Leiter made his comments, Israeli Ambassador to the UN Danny Danon aired concerns about Egyptian intentions during an interview with the Kol BaRama radio station.
“They spend hundreds of millions of dollars on modern military equipment every year, yet they have no threats on their borders,” Danon said. “Why do they need all these submarines and tanks? After October 7, this should raise alarm bells. We have learned our lesson. We must monitor Egypt closely and prepare for every scenario.”
According to a Yediot Aharonot report on Tuesday, World Jewish Congress president Ron Lauder flew hurriedly to Cairo on Tuesday and met with Sisi to try and ease tensions generated by Leiter’s comments.
The demilitarization of Sinai is a key principle of the Camp David Accords, which were signed by the US, Egypt, and Israel in 1979. On the same day the treaty was signed, Israel and the US signed a memorandum of agreement stipulating that “should it be demonstrated to the satisfaction of the United States that there has been a violation or threat of violation” of the agreement, the US will “take such remedial measures as it deems appropriate, which may include diplomatic, economic and military measures...”
The treaty with Egypt meticulously laid out exactly how many Egyptians could be stationed in Sinai, where, and with what armaments. That agreement divided Sinai into four zones, with Zone A closest to Egypt and Zone D along the international Egyptian-Israel border. It spelled out in detail exactly how many forces the Egyptians could maintain in each zone.
It also created a mechanism, the Multinational Force & Observers in Sinai, comprised of 1,165 international peacekeepers led by the US to supervise the implementation of the security provisions of the treaty and “employ best efforts” to prevent any violation of its terms.
Since 1979, Israel has, on several occasions, granted the Egyptians permission to introduce additional forces into Sinai. The first time came with the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza in 2005, when an accord was reached with the Egyptians to allow 750 border guards at the Gaza-Egypt border to prevent infiltrations.
Then, on several occasions following the 2011 Arab Spring and the ouster of former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak, Israel allowed Egypt to introduce troops and heavy weapons to quell the terrorism that had quickly taken root in Sinai.
Each time the Egyptians sought to deploy additional forces, they had to go to the prime minister for approval, and this approval is renewed monthly. There is debate, however, about whether they first seek approval for moving more troops into the Sinai and then deploy those troops, or do they first deploy the troops and only then inform Israel and seek formal approval.
It is understandable – with Israel involved in a sensitive ceasefire agreement in Lebanon that it wants to make sure is implemented – why Jerusalem wants to ensure that the Camp David Accords, including the Sinai demilitarization clauses, are upheld to the letter. But a structured mechanism already exists, overseen by the US, to address these issues – just as it has in the past – without the need for public escalation.
With tensions between Egypt and Israel already high, this is a moment for quiet diplomacy to solve this type of issue – not megaphone diplomacy, which will only exacerbate the situation.