Egypt, Israel and Palestinian Displacement

3 Oct 2025 03:03 PM

While the current peace proposal for Gaza, authored by Israel and the US, no longer includes displacement of Palestinians to Egypt's Sinai peninsula, Cairo is right to be concerned such an idea is a live consideration.

Earlier this week, US President Trump announced a new proposed ceasefire plan for Gaza, with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at his side in the White House. Previous pauses in fighting never developed into a full ceasefire; offramps that return to even more intense violence also exist within this plan. One key condition for any type of success – within this plan and many others – relies on the relationship between Egypt and Israel. And it is a relationship that has seen tremendous pressure in recent times.

Only a couple of weeks ago, Haaretz, among others, reported that Netanyahu asked Trump to intervene with Egypt over concerns about Cairo’s military posture in the Sinai Peninsula – only the latest sign that nearly five decades after Camp David, the Egypt–Israel peace treaty faces its most serious test. Cairo and Tel Aviv are deeply divided over the Gaza war, Israeli strikes on Qatar, and the renewed circulation of proposals to forcibly displace Palestinians into Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula. The latest Trump plan does not uphold those proposals, although the earlier ‘Riviera Plan’ did; but the saliency of support for such displacement in Israel will continue to profoundly concern Cairo. Moreover, the suggested role of Egypt within the Trump plan, both in terms of reconstruction and stabilisation, makes the relationship between Tel Aviv and Cairo ever more relevant to critically assess.

Israel’s aspirational security framework suggests offensive realist strategies aimed at establishing regional paramountcy, via localised hegemony. The desire reflects the continuation of classical Israeli doctrines, which emphasise military preponderance and pre-emptive freedom of action. Rather than embracing regional integration, Israel is prioritising qualitative military superiority and strategic autonomy.

For Egypt’s rulers, such a strategy threatens national security, risks complicity in genocide in Gaza, and unsettles the region’s security architecture in favour of a ‘New Middle East’, where Israel’s hegemonic paramountcy structures regional order around its own security imperatives. The gap between the two states has not been so large in decades.

From Israel’s perspective, displacement is no longer just a fringe notion but has become a recurring theme in mainstream political debate, driven in large part by extremist ministers and their allies within the governing coalition

The deterioration in relations is stark, driven by the increasingly dire situation in the Gaza Strip. Since 7 October 2023, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, 65,000 Palestinians have been killed, and around 163,000 injured with Israeli military data indicating a civilian death rate of 83%. The UN also notes that around 90% of Gaza’s population have been displaced during the war, many multiple times. The UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry, chaired by the former ICC judge Navi Pillay, issued a September 2025 report concluding that Israel’s actions in Gaza amounted to genocide, citing explicit statements by Israeli leaders, including Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, evidencing genocidal intent. The findings deepen a binding legal dimension to Cairo’s calculations, particularly as Egyptian public opinion is so impacted by what is happening in Gaza. Israel has rejected this determination, while Egypt has publicly endorsed it, with Cairo announcing last year it would intervene in support for South Africa’s case of genocide at the International Court of Justice, and Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sisi describing Israel’s actions as a ‘systematic genocide to eradicate the Palestinian cause’.

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