Sameh Shoukry - Munich Security Conference - Source: Conference website

During his participation in a dialogue seminar at the Munich Security Conference - and in response to a comment from former occupation Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni - Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shukry said: Hamas is “outside the consensus of the Palestinian people” by adopting violence and not recognizing “Israel,” calling for those who enabled it to be held accountable. It was in the Gaza Strip and financed it.

The Arab position

The statement and the incident were reminiscent of a similar incident, where Tzipi Livni herself threatened the Hamas movement and Gaza with annihilation in the 2008-2009 war in front of the Egyptian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, while in a meeting with the then Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit (who now holds the position of Secretary General of the Arab League), without any reservation. Or a comment, as well as an objection from the Minister.

A strange, recurring incident, as if there was a correlation between the Israeli wars on the Gaza Strip and the Egyptian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and a consensus of views between Tel Aviv and Cairo regarding Hamas specifically, or the latter’s lack of objection to plans to eliminate it, at the very least.

This raises question marks about the reality of the Egyptian position, and the official Arab position in general, regarding the war of genocide that has been ongoing for nearly five months.

The official positions of the Arab countries, in their vast majority, stood at the limits of statements condemning the aggression and calling for a ceasefire and the introduction of aid, without this turning into a real practical path towards these goals.

The Arab League held a joint summit with the Organization of Islamic Cooperation in Riyadh, and almost its only practical decision was to break the siege and support Egypt’s efforts to bring aid to the sector, without finding a practical echo of its implementation until now.

Cairo - despite the support provided by 56 other Arab and Muslim countries - still insists that the occupation prevents the entry of aid, and that it is responsible for that, without taking any practical step, even when lawyers defending the occupation at the International Court of Justice bragged that Egypt is responsible for (Non) introduction of aid.

On the other hand, it does not seem that there has been a rupture on the part of some Arab countries towards the occupying state, let alone the United States of America, as the occupation delegate to the United Nations met with the representative of one of the Arab countries and thanked her for her speech and position, in addition to numerous dialogues and meetings with American officials to consider In "post-war Gaza", and how to arrange the political and security structure there without Hamas according to what Washington wants and announces.

Indeed, some Arab countries - which are hiding behind the pretext of being unable to bring aid, food and medicine into Gaza, whose residents are subjected to a campaign of siege and starvation in addition to killing - have established a land corridor to export goods, especially vegetables and fruits, to the occupying state, as the latter announced and documented without categorical and convincing denials from the parties. Arabic.

Therefore, Sameh Shukry’s latest statement seems closer to accurately expressing the truth of the Egyptian position on the recent aggression, and therefore it carries worrying signs, especially given its context and content.

The Egyptian Minister implicitly condemned Hamas in his speech in which he responded to Livni (indeed, he interacted with it), as the latter held the Hamas movement - and the Palestinians - responsible for not declaring a Palestinian state, as if the occupying state - especially the most extremist Netanyahu government in its history - does not announce morning and evening... Its refusal to establish a Palestinian state despite public American statements.

Here, the Egyptian Foreign Minister is not content with supporting Livni's narrative, holding Hamas responsible and denying it responsibility for the occupation, but rather went on to condemn the Palestinian movement from two angles:

It pursues violence - a reprehensible characterization by the largest Arab country of the act of resistance to the occupation, even according to international law - and its departure from what he called the “Palestinian consensus” that wants to recognize “Israel,” which Shukri seems to see as represented only by the influential leadership of the authority.

Ignoring most, if not all, of the Palestinian forces and factions, including many of the leaders of the Fatah movement itself.

More important and more dangerous than all of the above, the minister, in his response to Livni, did not mention the war of extermination, siege, starvation, and all the war crimes committed in Gaza, as if the whole problem of the people of Gaza, currently, was that Hamas was refusing to recognize the occupation;

What prevented the establishment of a Palestinian state that includes the Gaza Strip.

Therefore, when we see that the repeated threats of a ground military operation in Rafah - which according to some reports includes more than one million and four hundred thousand Palestinians, with the potential massacre of civilians that this means - were not met with any practical movement by the Egyptian army on the other side of the border;

To prove the categorical rejection of the operation, and the violation of the Camp David Accords it entails, we can once again reach the conviction that Shukri’s latest statement is more accurate in expressing the truth of the position than other and previous statements.

Bounces

The Palestinian issue has always had direct and indirect effects on regional files, and sometimes the internal affairs of some Arab countries, and therefore it was previously an excuse used by some regimes to justify delayed development or some internal security policies, including extending states of emergency in the cordon countries, for example. Also, the legitimacy Some regimes were relatively attached to it and their position on it.

In 2011, from the heart of Tahrir Square, some of the youth of the Egyptian revolution said: The 2008 aggression against Gaza was one of the most important motivations for their revolution, in addition to the internal reasons related to Mubarak’s regime, from two important angles:

  • The first: the state of inspiration that Gaza provided with its steadfastness and performance of resistance - in addition to the steadfastness of its people - despite the restrictions, siege, and lack of capabilities.

  • The second: The inability of the Egyptian regime (and the Arab officialdom) to support the people of Gaza and/or stop the aggression. In fact, many describe this position as complicity in view of several matters, foremost among which are Livni’s aforementioned statements from the Egyptian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Today, the war on Gaza seems much larger and more serious than the possibility of comparison with the 2008 war, and therefore we should expect tangible repercussions and repercussions for it in many regional and even global paths.

If the inspiration of the resistance and the inability of the Arab official system were among the most important reasons for the first wave of the “Arab Spring,” then the resistance’s exponentially impressive performance in this war - compared to previous ones, in addition to the great extent of disappointment towards the suffering of the people of Gaza - leads to believe that similar indirect effects will occur on the long-term. ;

The medium and long term, especially since the causes of anger are still present in most of them and some of them have even worsened.

This meaning in particular may constitute an obsession for some regimes and push them to take a wary position towards the Hamas movement, especially since it is an Islamic movement, in addition to the fact that it is a resistance faction and a national liberation movement, and pushes them to the positions mentioned above.

But it is important to remember that these positions are not only a miserable attempt to stop the movement of history and swim against the tide of events, but they also contradict and contradict the vital interests of the Arab countries, specifically Egypt, which Gaza - and its resistance - is a major pillar of its national security and Arab national security by extension.

The statement of the Egyptian Foreign Minister, which to some extent reflects the real position - in the absence of any denial or clarification, let alone an apology - is far from the required position of truly condemning the war of extermination, and seriously seeking to break the siege and bring in aid, as required and permitted by international law and international humanitarian law. As well as the ties of neighbourliness, Arabism and Islam.

He also bears understandable hostility - although neither understandable nor justified - to the Hamas movement.

Meanwhile, the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip, specifically, are paying the price with their living flesh, the souls of their children, their lives, their development, and their future. All of this is recorded by history and recorded by the Palestinian people, and certainly by the Arab peoples.

The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of Al Jazeera.