Egypt scrambles to respond, often with violence, to protests targeting its embassies over Gaza

Security personnel standing guard at the Egyptian mission at the United Nations in New York have beaten and dragged two teenagers into the mission's headquarters. The two men were part of a protest regarding the deteriorating humanitarian conditions in the Gaza Strip caused by Israel and called for the Egyptian government to end its "complicity" in Israel's genocide. 

The incident, caught on video and shared on 21 August, came only days after a leaked video showed Egyptian Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty asking a senior official of the Egyptian embassy in The Hague to forcibly drag people who demonstrate outside the embassy in and call the police.

The instructions of the foreign minister triggered fears that protests–now taking place outside Egyptian embassies in several countries against what the protesters point to Egypt's complicity in Israel's siege on Gaza– will escalate even further.

"I hope reaction [to the protests] will be more balanced in the coming period, especially given the fact that foreign governments preserve security if the protests turn violent," ambassador Moataz Ahamdin, Egypt's former envoy to the United Nations, told The New Arab.

In response to the incident in New York, an Egyptian American man has filed a lawsuit on the Egyptian mission at the United Nations in New York, accusing staff of kidnapping and assaulting his two teenage sons during a peaceful protest outside the mission headquarters.

Akram Al-Sammak, a US citizen of Egyptian origin, told Al-Araby Al-Jadeed, the Arabic-language sister publication to The New Arab, that his sons, Ali and Yassin, were demonstrating peacefully on Thursday to demand the opening of the Rafah crossing and to allow entry of humanitarian aid into Gaza. He alleged that members of the mission forcibly dragged the boys into the building, beat them with iron chains, and fabricated charges of vandalism against them.

"My son was standing on the sidewalk when someone pulled him toward the door. He tried to resist, and when his brother came to help him, mission officials dragged them both inside," Al-Sammak said to Al-Araby Al-Jadeed. "They assaulted them with chains, even wrapping one around Yassin's neck, while Ali tried to push them away. Then the police arrived and detained my sons."

Both boys were arrested, but the charges against Ali were later dropped. Initially, he was charged with third-degree assault, a misdemeanor. Yassin faces more serious second-degree charges, including intentional property damage, which could carry prison time if upheld. Al-Sammak insists both are innocent and says video footage clearly shows they were the victims of assault. He has vowed to take legal action against the Egyptian mission.

When contacted by Al-Araby Al-Jadeed, the Egyptian mission declined to comment.

Activist Mustafa Al-Husseini, who shared videos of the incident online, accused Egypt's Foreign Ministry of encouraging the mission's actions. "It appears that recent statements and instructions from Foreign Minister Badr Abdel Aaty pushed mission staff to commit this scandal and violate US law," he said. 

Al-Husseini noted that he had protested outside Egyptian diplomatic buildings in Washington and New York many times without any similar incidents. He warned that the episode marked a serious escalation and expected US human rights organisations to intervene.

Protests outside Egyptian embassies erupted in July, primarily driven by demands to open the Rafah border crossing between Gaza and Sinai to allow humanitarian aid into Gaza while the Israeli army is using hunger as a weapon against the population of the war-shattered Palestinian territory.

Reported so far in over 16 countries, including the UK, the Netherlands, Turkey, and Libya, the protests began gaining momentum after an Egyptian activist symbolically locked the gate of the Egyptian embassy in The Hague on 21 July.

The incident sparked a global wave of similar actions, with foreign and Egyptian protesters using tactics like chaining embassy entrances, spray-painting walls, and banging pots to symbolise the Israeli-imposed famine in Gaza, where dozens of people, including children, have so far died from malnutrition.

These actions are also encouraging Egyptian government defenders to step in.

Earlier this month, an Egyptian national filmed himself "guarding" the embassy in The Hague against compatriots who protested what they described as Cairo's failure to offer enough humanitarian aid to the people of Gaza.

The man vowed to protect the embassy, while the protesters chanted against the Egyptian government on the opposite side of the road, throwing light on what some may view as rifts among Egyptians over their country's aid policy towards Gaza.

Former ambassador Ahmadin said guarding embassy headquarters should not be the job of ordinary people, but of the governments of the states hosting these embassies.

He called for reciprocation with foreign governments, not only about securing Egyptian embassies and diplomatic missions, but also on all other issues, including visa issuance and visits by senior officials from these countries to Egypt. 

Egypt's historical role in Israel's siege

The protests are causing deep concern in Egypt, especially within government quarters, for one reason: they strike at the core of Egypt's policy towards Gaza, namely the humanitarian aid track, considered by Cairo to be a tenet of its approach towards the Palestinian territory.

Before 2023, the Rafah crossing was Gaza's only gateway into the outside world, with Israel firmly shuttering its other five border crossings with the territory since Hamas' takeover of the coastal enclave in 2007.

The previous Hosni Mubarak regime in Egypt had played a key role in supporting Israel's siege on Gaza due to the government own hostility towards Hamas and links with the Muslim Brotherhood. This policy grew more draconian under Sisi's government, which dispatched the Egyptian military to destroy and flood tunnels between Gaza and the Sinai Peninsula.

When Israel's new war began in October 2023, the Rafah crossing became the only lifeline for Gaza's population of over 2 million, especially with Israel using starvation as a weapon of war.

A logistics hub was established in the North Sinai city of al-Arish, where Egypt receives aid from other countries and puts it in order before sending it into Gaza through the Rafah crossing.

Cairo claims the crossing is open on the Egyptian side, but has been closed on the Gaza side since May last year, when the Israeli army occupied it.

"Israel prevents the entry of the aid into Gaza, being in control of the Gaza side of the border crossing with Egypt," Ahmadin said.

"This occupation had cut off geographical links between Egypt and Gaza," he added.

He, however, viewed protests against the deteriorating humanitarian crisis in Gaza positively, attributing Israel's latest decision to ease restrictions on aid entry to these protests.

"Some of these protests are based on wrong information, but our government should not overreact, otherwise it will give the impression that it is doing something wrong or that it has to be on the defensive," he claimed.

Nevertheless, incidents like when the Egyptian authorities blocked a convoy heading to Gaza, dubbed "The Global March to Gaza",  in June which added further fuel to the allegations of Egyptian complicity with Israel.

Meanwhile, on 18 August, Minister Abdelatty accompanied visiting Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Mustafa on a tour of the Rafah crossing.

Abdelatty described the Israeli policy in Gaza as "systematic starvation," and called on the international community to lobby hard for increasing the amounts of aid entering Gaza.

"Israel has a clear legal responsibility to open its border crossings with Gaza," the Egyptian foreign minister said.

He noted that over 5,000 trucks loaded with humanitarian aid were waiting as he spoke on the Egyptian side of the border for Israeli permission to enter Gaza.

National security issue

Egyptian officials, including Prime Minister Mustafa, often hold Israel solely responsible for blocking the entry of aid into Gaza.

"Egypt does everything possible to increase the amounts of aid entering Gaza, but it is the Israelis who are preventing the entry of this aid," the Palestinian prime minister said.

Some of the people protesting outside Egyptian embassies in other countries fault Cairo for failing to apply sufficient pressure on both Israel and the US to allow the entry of sufficient amounts of aid to Gaza.

Egypt, the first Arab country to sign a peace treaty with Israel in 1979, is in close contact with Tel Aviv and Washington, being a main interlocutor with Qatar in current proximity talks between Israel and Hamas, ones aiming at securing a ceasefire and the release of Israeli hostages in Gaza and Palestinian prisoners in Israel's custody.

On 18 August, Egypt and Qatar succeeded in securing approval by Hamas to a ceasefire framework put forward in June this year by US envoy Steve Witkoff.

In demanding that Egypt exert more pressure on Israel and the US to open all border crossings with Gaza and allow the entry of more aid, those demonstrating outside Egyptian embassies are overestimating what Cairo can do in this regard, observers said.

"Egypt has been doing whatever it can to help the Palestinians, in general, and the people of Gaza, in particular," Palestinian political analyst Ayman al-Raqab told TNA.

"We should always remember that but for Egyptian pressure, humanitarian aid would have never been allowed by Israel into Gaza since the beginning of the war," he added.

The pressures Egypt applies for the entry of aid into Gaza are intertwined with a series of Egyptian national security considerations, observers like al-Raqab said.

In trying to enter as much aid as possible into Gaza, Egypt, which has formulated a plan for the reconstruction of the war-devastated territory without displacing its people, wants to make Gaza a place fit for life, in the face of Israel's desire to make it unliveable.

The improvement of humanitarian conditions in Gaza is Egypt's tool to prevent the displacement of its people, either into Sinai or anywhere else, analysts argued.

Sisi vowed earlier this month that his country would not turn into a gateway for the displacement of the people of Gaza.

Israel, which has declared a plan to fully occupy Gaza, wants to make it unfit for life to force its people to leave it, analysts said.

"Egypt protects its national security by entering aid into Gaza," al-Raqab said. "For the Egyptians, the Palestinian issue as a whole is a national security one."