The Israeli security cabinet’s decision to take full control of Gaza is another escalation in the devastating 22-month war on the Palestinian territory.
The campaign, defined by rights groups and legal scholars as a genocide, has so far killed over 60,000 people, with 75% of the 365-kilometre enclave now under Israeli control as two million Palestinians are confined to around 12% of the terrain.
While much is still unclear about the plan, Israel is unlikely to take over administrative control of Gaza, much less reconstruct the territory or provide services to Palestinians.
Instead, Tel Aviv says it will maintain security control and wants to establish a civil authority that is neither the Palestinian Authority nor Hamas.
In neighbouring Egypt, Israel’s war has presented both an existential threat and a diplomatic quandary, with Cairo fearful of plans to ethnically cleanse Palestinians into Sinai but unable to exert influence on US and Israeli policy.
Before the Israeli security cabinet’s decision, Egypt had spearheaded a post-war plan as a counterproposal to US President Donald Trump’s suggestion that Palestinians be displaced and Gaza redeveloped as a beach resort.
Since Tel Aviv’s announcement, Egyptian and Qatari mediators were reportedly working on a new framework to release Israeli hostages in return for an end to the war and the withdrawal of Israeli forces, the Associated Press reported.
But Israel, with US approval, is unlikely to be deterred from its plan to fully take over Gaza, leaving Egypt’s post-war strategy up in the air as it assesses its future diplomatic role.
Egypt's role after the war
Egypt’s post-war planning had mostly factored in that Israel would withdraw from the Palestinian territory if Hamas was defeated, and Cairo has repeatedly stated it will not take over administrative control of Gaza, especially under a full Israeli occupation.
In Cairo’s strongest rebuke of Israel to date, last week, President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi accused Tel Aviv of carrying out a “systematic genocide” aimed at “erasing” the Palestinian cause.
"By systematically destroying everything in Gaza, Israel primarily aims to make life impossible in it after the end of the war," Palestinian political researcher Taysir Elkhatib told The New Arab.
"The reconstruction process will be very difficult, but the Palestinians will stay put, because they have nowhere else to go," he added.
Egypt's refusal to take over administrative rule is strongly connected with both the Arab country's national security concerns and the future of Palestine as an aspiring state.
This rejection was most recently highlighted by the head of the State Information Service, the media arm of the Egyptian presidency, Diaa Rashwan, who said his country does not seek to govern Gaza.
This Egyptian position is also rooted in Egypt's fears of becoming embroiled in the security and administrative chaos of post-war Gaza, analysts told The New Arab.
With Hamas insisting it will not disarm, Egypt worries that any country or body that governs Gaza would inevitably clash with the group at some point.
"Hamas is an Israeli problem, not an Egyptian one," Egyptian political analyst Ahmed Abdel Maguid told TNA.
In the case of an Israeli withdrawal, meanwhile, Egypt, which ruled Gaza from 1948 until 1967, does not want to be seen as occupying Palestinian territory or becoming a policeman guaranteeing Israel’s security.
Part of Egypt’s refusal to govern Gaza results from Cairo’s image of itself as a patron of Palestinian statehood.
This view is partly behind Egypt's repeated refusal to take in Palestinian refugees, a suggestion initially made by Israel and then by US President Donald Trump, who suggested depopulating Gaza to build a ‘Middle East Riviera’.
Security concerns, however, are a much larger driver of this rejection, as Cairo fears that the mass displacement of Palestinians into Sinai could move the notion of armed resistance against Israel from Gaza to its own territory.
Sisi has long said that any forced displacement would signal the end of the Egypt-Israel peace treaty of 1979.
Cairo under fire for inaction
Public anger has simmered throughout the war at a perceived lack of action over Israel’s genocide, especially following deadly clashes with Israeli forces at the border and aggressive Israeli actions in Rafah and the Philadelphi corridor.
Demonstrations have been suppressed, with dozens of people detained during protests over Israel’s war. Egypt has also barred entry to pro-Palestinian activists and prevented a ‘Sumud Caravan’ travelling from Tunisia to enter Egypt en route to Gaza.
Activists who gathered in Cairo to take part in a global march to Gaza have also been arrested.
More recently, activists have been protesting at Egyptian embassies across the world, demanding that Cairo open the Rafah crossing and allow in aid to help starving Palestinians.
Egypt has blamed the country’s failure to get aid into Gaza on the presence of Israeli forces on the other side of the Rafah crossing, which has effectively severed the land link between Egypt and Gaza.
As a result, thousands of tonnes of humanitarian aid continue to perish on the Egyptian side of the border while Palestinians die of hunger a few kilometres away.
Challenges to Cairo's post-war strategy
Egypt’s post-war reconstruction plan, unveiled in March this year, primarily aimed to prevent the depopulation of Gaza.
"Egypt basically wants this reconstruction to move hand in hand with the handover of Gaza's administration to the Palestinian Authority," political researcher Taysir Elkhatib said.
Egypt believes that the PA’s takeover of Gaza would create the necessary unity of Palestinian territories on the road to establishing a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza, with East Jerusalem as its capital.
Apart from proposing a nonpartisan panel for managing Gaza after the war, Egypt has also offered to train PA security personnel to take responsibility for security affairs in the coastal territory.
However, this now faces several challenges, largely the Israeli plan to fully occupy Gaza and its insistence that the PA will not rule Gaza. Hamas’s refusal to lay down its arms, even though it has expressed openness to a technocratic governing body, also threatens Cairo’s proposal.
The same total conquest plan also undermines international endorsement of Palestinian statehood, especially at a time when several countries plan to recognise a Palestinian state in September.
"Israel and the US have always shattered Palestinian statehood dreams, with the former doing this by occupying Palestinian land and the latter by deceiving the Palestinians over the years," Elkhatib said.
"Hamas will not accept laying down its arms, a demand that in the group's resistance jargon is synonymous with a death sentence," he added.
Saleh Salem is an Egyptian journalist