US President Donald Trump appears to have developed different ideas about Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi upon whom he bestowed the moniker “favorite dictator” during the 2019 G-7 meeting in France. At the time, the 45th president of the United States had developed a cordial relationship with the general-turned-president who six years earlier had staged a coup against Islamist President Mohamed Morsi and thwarted Egypt’s democratic experiment. Trump’s four years in the White House saw the relationship flourish as the Egyptian president consolidated his rule and eliminated most of Egypt’s secular and Islamist opposition.
Now, in his second tour in the White House, Trump felt primed to force Sisi and Jordanian King Abdullah II to swallow an extremely bitter pill by accepting the Palestinians of Gaza who would be displaced to allow the US president to “take over” the Strip in order to transform it into the “Riviera of the Middle East.” Trump doubled down on his original Gaza proposal by threatening to withhold US aid to Egypt and Jordan if they do not accept his scheme, only to scale back on the aid threat but insist that Palestinians would not be allowed to return to Gaza once they leave. But after Egypt’s and Jordan’s continued rejection of the idea, Trump seemed to back down from his plan, while still asserting that it was the best solution for the enclave. Sensing a great opportunity, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared that his country is working to make Trump’s Gaza scheme “a reality” as he received US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who appeared to have been proud to peddle Trump’s ethnic cleansing of Palestinians during his first Middle East trip.
That Sisi and Abdullah are cognizant of the very heavy price they would have to pay to mollify Trump is a foregone conclusion; thus, their unequivocal rejection of the scheme. Immediately after Trump’s declaration of taking over Gaza, Egypt started warning that the scheme would jeopardize the Egyptian-Israeli treaty of 1979 that inaugurated a new American-led entente in the Middle East. Later, Egypt’s Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty announced that his country is developing a plan to rebuild Gaza without displacing Gazans, in a clear refutation of Trump’s wish. All King Abdullah was able to do following a visit to the White House was to promise President Trump that Jordan would take in 2,000 Gazan children for medical treatment, but reiterated his country’s rejection of Trump’s proposal.
Sisi and Abdullah are cognizant of the very heavy price they would have to pay to mollify Trump.
Both countries are staunch allies of the United States and play central roles in American strategic posturing. But both know they must be careful in how they respond to President Trump’s mostly cavalier pronouncements and directives for fear of retaliation. Although Trump seemed to have backed down on the threat to withhold aid from both countries, they are cautious that his mercurial mood and hubris may bring him back to his originally antagonistic behavior. For Egypt, the question remains about how Sisi and the Egyptian ruling establishment, including the armed forces, can oppose Trump while simultaneously placating him, considering the centrality of the strategic American-Egyptian relationship to the survival of the Sisi regime and that of the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty.
Sisi’s Conundrums
It is not hard to see how challenging Sisi’s position is vis-à-vis Trump’s ill-advised and ill-informed ideas regarding the Gaza Strip. Indeed, how does an Egyptian leader whose economy continues to be in deep crisis respond to the president of the United States proposing to ethnically cleanse some two million Palestinians from the Strip and resettle many of them in Egypt, most assuredly permanently? And how does he respond given that he knows that the Egyptian people are adamantly opposed to a repeat of the 1948 Palestinian Nakba and numerous episodes of Palestinian dispossession since, such as what is currently taking place across the occupied West Bank?
Indeed, while Sisi seems to have dodged a bullet at this time, no one can be fully sure that the American president will not retaliate in the future against his defiance. For Sisi, the stakes are very serious on a number of fronts.
First, there should be no doubt that Egypt cherishes its military relationship with the United States, which has made the Egyptian armed forces a pillar of the American geostrategic posture in the Middle East. The same can be said of the American military’s understanding of its relationship with Egypt’s Armed Forces, the backbone of the Sisi regime. In September 2024, the Biden administration decided to ignore Sisi’s mass human rights violations and provide Egypt with its full $1.3 billion annual military aid allocation. The reasoning was that Egypt was pivotal to Israel-Hamas ceasefire talks and that continued support served US interests. The same reasoning must have helped govern the thinking of the new Trump administration, which in January 2025 exempted military aid to Egypt (and Israel) while it froze nearly all other foreign assistance. But given Trump’s mercurial decision-making style, Sisi cannot be sure that even this exemption would stand if Trump continued to view the Gaza issue through the same lens as when he made his controversial announcement.
Second, Sisi understands how important it is for his regime to stay on good terms with the United States for economic reasons, no matter who is president. The Egyptian economy is in dire straits and is in need of international monetary assistance from such institutions as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) where the United States has long held sway. To be sure, the United States and other international actors believe that Egypt is too important to fail, especially at a time when regional conditions in the Middle East are not conducive to gradual and sustainable economic development such as that needed by Egypt. For example, in March 2024, despite Egypt’s failure to use its prior assistance to correct deep-rooted economic problems, the IMF increased a $3 billion bailout loan to Egypt that originated in December 2022 to $8 billion. In the same month, the European Union gave Egypt an aid package of $8 billion to be disbursed over a three-year period. Both donors were acting to stabilize Egypt’s economy due to the destabilizing Gaza war going on next door. Egypt cannot be fully comfortable economically if it does not accommodate the policy declarations made by the Trump White House.
Third, whatever the American posture on Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, and however Egypt responds to President Trump’s declarations, President Sisi still has an untenable position vis-à-vis the Strip and its inhabitants. As a state, Egypt has since its signing of the 1979 Peace Treaty with Israel sidelined itself from playing a pivotal role in protecting Gazans and Palestinians in general from Israeli aggression and plans of dispossession. But as a neighbor of the Strip and an Arab state whose population rejects Palestinian displacement, Egypt must be forceful in opposing what Israel’s right-wing leaders wish to do there: settle the territory, or significant parts of it, after emptying it of its inhabitants. If that fiasco happens, the question for Sisi, his regime, and his armed forces then becomes whether to use force to prevent Gazans’ dispossession and expulsion into Sinai—thus waging war against Israel—or accept the situation as a fait accompli and risk domestic backlash.
Sisi cannot appear to act alone without the cooperation of Jordan and the backing of the Gulf Arab states.
Perhaps the Sisi regime has bought itself some time when Trump backed down from his proposal and with its plan for Gaza’s reconstruction that seems to have the support of most Arab governments. To be sure, Sisi cannot appear to act alone without the cooperation of Jordan—the other state to which Trump wanted to displace Palestinians—and the backing of the Gulf Arab states—whose financial resources for Gaza’s reconstruction are essential. But the problem remains in the associated part of the reconstruction plan, that of governing Gaza in the postwar period. Egypt and the rest of the Arab world prefer that the (perhaps reformed) Palestinian Authority (PA) govern the Strip; Egyptian pressure reportedly convinced Hamas to yield on the issue. But Israel’s Netanyahu has rejected the prospect of either the PA or Hamas being in charge of the enclave and instead is working on realizing Trump’s plan to displace its inhabitants. Essentially, Sisi and his Arab backers have an extremely thin margin for maneuver: they must convince Trump that the Arab world can manage the Gaza situation successfully but are under no illusion that the American president is more prone to listen to his Israeli friend than to countenance cooperation with them.
More Than Pesky issues in Egyptian-Israeli Relations
It is safe to assert that one of the most important pillars of Egyptian-Israeli relations is the 1979 Peace Treaty that charted the parameters of the relationship between the two countries and their mutual duties and responsibilities. Two provisions in and adjacent to the Treaty are now central for how the two countries perceive the relationship: allowing the deployment of a limited number of Egyptian forces in the Sinai Peninsula, and permitting a limited Egyptian police presence in the Philadelphi Corridor separating the Gaza Strip from Egypt’s northeastern border.
In May 2024, Israel took control of the Corridor after besieging the Palestinian side of the city of Rafah on the Egyptian-Gaza border. It also took control of the Rafah crossing—that the Palestinian Authority supervised from Israel’s 2005 Gaza withdrawal until Hamas’s 2007 takeover of the Strip—through which much of what entered and exited Gaza passed. In January 2025, the Israeli Army finally withdrew from the crossing but maintained its control over the Philadelphi Corridor, asserting that it destroyed Hamas tunnels there through which the organization imported its supplies. To Egypt, Israel’s presence is a clear violation of the peace treaty and a dangerous development that impedes cooperation on border security.
From its side, Israel is complaining that Egypt is violating the treaty by deploying more troops and military equipment than is allowed by the accord and allowing the existence of smuggling tunnels under the City of Rafah that reach into the Sinai Peninsula. The Israeli ambassador to the United States, Yechiel Leiter—a prominent figure in the right-wing and settler movement in Israel—recently accused the Egyptian president of playing both sides of the conflict to “benefit Hamas,” and accused Egypt of grave violations of agreed peace principles regarding alleged military deployments that, he argued, appear to be for offensive purposes. Egypt has denied the accusation about the tunnels, saying that it has destroyed hundreds of them and that its troop increases were agreed to by Israel. Indeed, since 2013, the two countries have negotiated exceptions to troop deployment restrictions to help the Egyptian Armed Forces fight Islamic State insurgents in Sinai. With the talk by President Trump and Netanyahu and his associates of emptying out Gaza of its Palestinians, these Israeli accusations may simply be chalked up as pressure tactics to force the Egyptian state to accept Palestinian displacement to Sinai.
Despite the Squeeze, Sisi Maneuvers
There should be no doubt that President Sisi and his government consider the current moment to be one of extreme danger that requires extra caution and level-headed diplomacy. Convening the February 21 meeting in Saudi Arabia was perhaps only a part, albeit a very important one, of Egypt’s effort to both involve the Arab world in devising a united Arab stance regarding the Trump talk of displacing Palestinians (and Netanyahu’s preparation for such) and try to commit the Gulf states to finance the reconstruction of Gaza. To be sure, Sisi (and Jordan’s King Abdullah) may not think they can convince the American president to change his mind without relying on the strategic depth, both politically and financially, that the Arab world can provide.
But there are at least two other tactics that the Egyptian president could try to use to avoid what Trump throws in his face. One is relying on Saudi Arabia to convince transactional Trump to forego his proposal for displacing Palestinians in favor of lucrative arms deals with the kingdom that the US president cherishes. The other is to call on the offices of Russian President Vladimir Putin who appears to have good relations with the American president to dissuade Trump. But whatever Sisi’s options are and however much he maneuvers, the current moment is a decidedly uncomfortable one as he feels the heat from someone who only a few years ago anointed him dean of all dictators.
The views expressed in this publication are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the position of Arab Center Washington DC, its staff, or its Board of Directors.
Featured image credit: Flickr/The White House
