\n<\/p>\n
Top News<\/p>\n
For weeks, talk-show hosts and newspaper columnists across Egypt\u2019s government-managed media spoke with one voice: Any Israeli \u201coccupation\u201d of the Philadelphi Corridor, a buffer zone on the Egypt-Gaza border, could constitute a violation of Egypt\u2019s sovereignty and national security. That would deal a further blow to a relationship that Israel\u2019s military offensive in southern Gaza had already brought to its lowest point in decades.<\/p>\n
But when Israel\u2019s military said that it had seized \u201ctactical control\u201d of the corridor last week, the same government mouthpieces were quick to say that the border area had nothing to do with Egypt; sovereignty went unmentioned.<\/p>\n
It was the latest indication that Cairo remains protective of its relationship with Israel, which has generated valuable military and intelligence cooperation against Egyptian insurgents, as well as billions of dollars in American aid and natural gas imports from Israel.<\/p>\n
For Israel, too, more than four decades of a so-called \u201ccold peace\u201d with Egypt has proved to be an essential pillar of national security. The alliance gave Israel a path to better relations with its Muslim neighbors, paving the way for its normalization of ties with more countries and making it an increasingly integral part of a regional, anti-Iranian axis.<\/p>\n
Still, Israel took the risk of upsetting the delicate balance because it says it needed to take control of the Philadelphi Corridor to destroy dozens of tunnels under the border that it says have enabled Hamas to smuggle arms into the strip \u2014 despite Egypt\u2019s avowals that it put a stop to the smuggling years ago.<\/p>\n
The Israeli military\u2019s push into southern Gaza and the city of Rafah in recent weeks has now put a serious strain on ties between the two countries, raising questions about how far Israel will go in insisting on complete control over the border area, and how much of a continued Israeli presence there Egypt can tolerate.<\/p>\n
Egypt\u2019s patience with Israel\u2019s military moves is wearing dangerously thin, as it has repeatedly made clear. Not only is the government panicked at the prospect of Gazans fleeing the Rafah fighting over the border into Egypt, but it is also determined to show its public that it is standing up to Israel, which most Egyptians still regard as an enemy despite the 45-year-old peace treaty.<\/p>\n
Cairo has registered to speak in support of South Africa\u2019s case at the International Court of Justice accusing Israel of committing genocide in Gaza. And it has warned that Israel is jeopardizing the 1979 peace treaty between the two countries, which grew out of what are known as the Camp David Accords.<\/p>\n
Though it has denounced Israel for cutting off humanitarian aid to Gaza, Egypt itself temporarily stopped the flow of aid trucks from its own territory, where most aid accumulates before being trucked to the Palestinian strip \u2014 an attempt to pressure Israel into withdrawing from the Rafah crossing. That border point, the main conduit for aid and other supplies during the war, lies between Egypt and Gaza but was recently occupied by Israel, drawing public outrage in Egypt.<\/p>\n
Egypt has refrained from taking more serious steps to respond to Israel\u2019s moves, such as withdrawing its ambassador from Tel Aviv. And the government-managed news media appears to have been helping with efforts to limit public outrage.<\/p>\n
Egypt is \u201cready for all scenarios, and will never allow any encroachment on its sovereignty and its national security, either directly or indirectly,\u201d Ahmed Moussa, a prominent talk-show host, wrote in a column for Al-Ahram, Egypt\u2019s flagship daily newspaper, on May 17.<\/p>\n
Yet when Israel took the corridor last Wednesday, Mr. Moussa was on the air, fulminating against social media users who said Egypt looked weak for allowing the seizure. He linked such \u201callegations\u201d to the Muslim Brotherhood, the political Islamist group that Egypt has long demonized as a terrorist organization, of which Hamas is an offshoot.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Philadelphi Corridor is not Egyptian territory,\u201d Mr. Moussa insisted in a nine-minute segment devoted to the issue, displaying a giant map. \u201cIt\u2019s Palestinian territory. It doesn\u2019t belong to us. Let me show you our borders.\u201d<\/p>\n
Isabel Kershner contributed reporting.<\/p>\n