It Isn’t Just Israel and Hamas. Israel and Egypt Have to Agree, Too.
A dispute between the peace-treaty partners is complicating already fraught U.S. efforts to secure a cease-fire deal for Gaza
The Biden administration has been racing to close what it calls the last remaining gaps holding up a cease-fire deal between Israel and Hamas. Now, it is also wrestling with a growing dispute between Israel and Egypt.
At issue is Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s demand that Israeli troops be allowed to remain along the 9-mile border between Gaza and Egypt, known as the Philadelphi Corridor, which Israel says is a smuggling route for Hamas.
Egypt has refused that demand, arguing it would constitute a violation of the Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty, Egyptian officials said. It also doesn’t want to be seen as complicit in an Israeli occupation of Gaza, they said.
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The impasse is threatening a rupture between two U.S. partners and deepening the complexities of a cease-fire deal that was already struggling to gain traction. Egypt has been a mediator between Israel and Hamas to pause the fighting in Gaza. Now, for those talks to succeed, Israel and Egypt will have to first sort out their own disagreements.
The U.S. has been trying to broker a compromise about the size of the Israeli force that would be stationed along the border. Egypt has continued to reject any Israeli presence there.
White House Middle East coordinator Brett McGurk met in Cairo on Thursday with intelligence chief Abbas Kamel to try to find a path forward for the talks. Israeli officials joined McGurk for further talks with Kamel on Thursday night. CIA Director William Burns was expected to arrive in Cairo on Friday. This follows a meeting between U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Al Sisi in New Alamein on Tuesday.
Analysts are skeptical about whether a compromise over the presence of Israeli troops along the border is possible.
“There is a crisis of distrust between Israel and Egypt,” said Yisrael Ziv, a retired Israeli general who headed Israel’s Gaza division and is briefed on the war by current officials. “I don’t see how the Americans can circle the square: Either there is an Israeli presence, or there isn’t one.”
The U.S. is trying to swiftly wrap up a cease-fire deal not only to address humanitarian needs in the Gaza Strip but also now to de-escalate regional tensions as Iran and Lebanese militia Hezbollah prepare to respond to a pair of Israel-linked killings in Tehran and Beirut last month.
While U.S. officials have signaled that a deal could be close, negotiators have said the parties remain far apart on important issues and that significant obstacles remain, including around Israeli troop deployments.
While pursuing the talks, the U.S. has bulked up its military assets in the region. The USS Abraham Lincoln has arrived in the Middle East, the U.S. said overnight, putting a second carrier strike group in the region.
Ziv said the current impasse between Egypt and Israel is an outgrowth of increasing tension between the countries that began after Israel’s invasion of Rafah, the town on the border between Gaza and Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula.
Israel gave Egypt just hours notice of the impending operation, seizing control of the Gaza side of the Rafah border crossing with Egypt, Egyptian officials said. The Egyptian government closed its side of the crossing in protest and threatened to downgrade Egypt’s diplomatic representation in Israel.
Egyptian officials say that the presence of Israeli forces in the area along the border violates the terms of the 1979 Egypt-Israel peace treaty, which limits the number of troops either country can deploy near the border. The treaty bans Israel from deploying tanks, artillery and antiaircraft weapons in the Philadelphi Corridor. Israel denies any violation of the treaty.
Israel is insisting on its own presence in the corridor, because it doesn’t believe it can count on Egypt to shut down Hamas’s weapons smuggling.
Israel’s military has said it found a number of tunnels in Rafah near the border with Egypt, though it hasn’t said how many were operational on the Egyptian side of the border. Egypt denies such routes exist.
While Netanyahu insists that Israeli troops be on the ground in the corridor, the Israeli military has indicated it believes it is possible to secure the border area from afar using sensors and an underground barrier. Still, the Israeli military wants to be able to operate along the corridor through tactical raids whenever it deems necessary.
Israel’s cease-fire negotiators recently proposed establishing eight observation towers along the Philadelphi Corridor, while the U.S. tried to offer concessions by proposing two towers, the Egyptian officials said. Egypt rejected both proposals, arguing that any number of towers gives Israel’s military a presence and permanent access, they said.
Egypt is also seeking U.S. guarantees that even if Israel leaves the corridor in the first of what are meant to be three stages of the cease-fire deal, Israel won’t return in later stages if the process stumbles.
Netanyahu has publicly vowed to increase the Israeli presence in the area if he believes there is a danger to Israel’s war aims of destroying Hamas and making sure militants in Gaza won’t threaten Israel’s security in the future.
“Israel will insist on achieving all the goals of the war, as defined by the cabinet—including the goal that Gaza will no longer pose a security threat to Israel,” Netanyahu’s office said Wednesday. “This requires securing the southern border.”
Israel and Egypt have joint security interests and a long history solving disagreements behind the scenes, making it likely that the two sides will fix the current dispute, said Daniel Kurtzer, a former U.S. ambassador to both Egypt and Israel.
“There is probably a solution available to the Israel-Egypt problem,” Kurtzer said. “But I’m not sure if there’s a solution to Hamas’s requirements.”
Haim Koren, a former Israeli ambassador to Egypt, said that while it is true that Israel and Egypt have long been able to solve disagreements, Netanyahu’s tight control over what Israeli negotiating teams can say and offer in Cairo has damaged the usual process for conflict resolution.
“Even in bad times, there was always a mechanism where we could speak silently behind the scenes and solve all the problems,” Koren said. “It’s not like it used to be.”
Write to Dov Lieber at dov.lieber@wsj.com and Summer Said at summer.said@wsj.com
Corrections & Amplifications
Abbas
Kamel is Egypt’s intelligence chief. An earlier version of this article
incorrectly spelled his name Abbas Kamal. (Corrected on Aug. 22)