Treason or necessity? Egyptians unsold over record gas pact with Israel

Fierce opposition is sweeping across Egypt as a multibillion-dollar natural gas import deal with Israel, recently approved by Tel Aviv, prepares to take effect.

The $35 billion deal, which involves expanding exports from Israel's Leviathan offshore gas field, was approved by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on 17 December. It extends over the next 15 years and will involve exporting 130 billion cubic metres of gas to the energy-hungry Arab state.

The agreement has set off public dissent, with some asking about whether the Egyptian government is offering Tel Aviv such a considerable amount of money to reward it for the killing of close to 70,000 Palestinians during its two-year genocidal war on the Gaza Strip.

"Our government appears to be signing such a deal in support of Netanyahu, who is accused of committing genocide in Gaza," said Kamal Abu Eita, a political activist and the former minister of labour.

He accused the government of normalising relations with a state that continues to kill Arabs and occupy Arab land.

"There's no logical justification for signing such a deal," Abu Eita remarked to The New Arab.

Egypt seeks additional gas to offset a sharp decline in local production, which has strained the populous country's electricity generation and threatens to deter industrial investment.

Moreover, the decrease in local gas production set off recurrent electricity cuts, which Egyptian authorities fear could ignite a political or security backlash at a time of rising regional tensions against the background of Israel's war on Gaza, the civil war in Sudan and unrest along the Red Sea.

Political pressure card?

The deal approved by Netanyahu on 17 December was initially signed in August. At the time, it was described as the "largest" in Israel's history, but faced delays due to concerns about pricing in the Israeli domestic market and the risk of reserve depletion.

Meanwhile, in Egypt, the delays were viewed as a political tactic used by Netanyahu to penalise Egyptians for opposing his country's regional policies, especially in Gaza.

Cairo and Tel Aviv have been locking horns since the beginning of Israel's genocidal war on Gaza in October 2023, particularly regarding Israeli atrocities in the coastal enclave and plans to displace its Palestinian population into Egypt or anywhere else.

Egypt continues to firmly stand against the concept of Gaza's depopulation under any or all pretexts.

Netanyahu's approval of the deal, analysts in Cairo said, has been a direct result of pressure from US President Donald Trump.

"This approval would never have come without this pressure," said international relations researcher Islam Mansi.

Speaking to TNA, he added that—among other things—the US president wants to reward Egypt for co-brokering a ceasefire in Gaza, together with Qatar and Turkey, in mid-October this year.

The view among like-minded political analysts is also that US President Donald Trump, who has a larger plan for regional peace and Israel's integration into the regional economic system, does not want to alienate Egypt, the first Arab country to sign a peace treaty with Israel in 1979.

Energy hub

The latest deal to import gas from Israel is merely an expansion of another signed in February 2018 by a private Egyptian firm and partners in Israel's Tamar and Leviathan offshore gas fields, which covered the import of 64 billion cubic metres of gas over 10 years. This $15-billion deal is expected to end in 2028.

When it was signed, it raised eyebrows in Egypt and across the region, given the strained peace between Cairo and Tel Aviv and the regular political and diplomatic tensions between the two sides.

Commenting on it, however, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi said his country had "scored a goal" by hammering out such an agreement.

Deep beneath the Egyptian leader's enthusiasm for importing gas from Israel lie his country's plans to become a regional energy centre.

In addition to its growing energy needs, Egypt aims to collect gas produced in neighbouring states, process it, and re-export it to the international market, utilising its extensive liquefaction infrastructure.

It established the Eastern Mediterranean Gas Forum, an OPEC-like organisation of regional gas-producing and consuming states, for this objective.

Beyond the energy hub objective, the forum's formation highlighted the changing regional geopolitical landscape, in which hydrocarbons are being presented as a unifying force in a region that has seen more than its fair share of conflicts, analysts claim.

Purely commercial?

The Egyptian government also claims the deal is purely commercial and unrelated to any political issues. At present, Israeli gas accounts for 15-20% of Egypt's annual gas needs.

Those who agree with the government's position in this regard even describe the import of pipeline gas from Israel as "cost-effective" compared with importing LNG from other countries, such as Qatar, under its preferential deal. 

"Proximity is a very decisive factor in this regard," Mansi argued. "As a factor, this proximity renders Israeli gas far cheaper than the LNG that can come from any other country."

Israeli gas imports come through the Arish-Ashkelon pipeline (also known as the East Mediterranean Gas pipeline). This 100-kilometre subsea pipeline branches off from the Arab Gas pipeline near the North Sinai city of al-Arish and then runs underwater to Ashkelon in southern Israel.

It was originally constructed to export Egyptian gas to Israel between 2005 and 2008, before national production dramatically declined and Egypt resorted to imports to bridge the gap between production and consumption.

The presence of such a pipeline, specialists argue, makes Israeli gas far cheaper than LNG imports from other countries.

This is likely why the same deal is coming under fire within Israel, where commentators accuse their government of inking an agreement that serves Egypt's interests, not those of local consumers.

In Egypt, the same deal is facing even sharper criticism, but this criticism has so far been restricted to social media, apparently because those making it fear arrest.

Some Egyptians have described the deal as "high treason".

"Buying Israeli gas for the highest price after the war on Gaza, while Egyptians live on aid, is a criminal act," an Egyptian user, IbnAlSayaad, wrote on X.

Another account described the agreement as a violation of international law for offering support to Israel amid its genocide against the Palestinians.

The last time Cairo's streets witnessed protests was in 2017, when hundreds of demonstrators protested against an Egyptian plan to transfer management control of the Red Sea islands of Tiran and Sanafir to Saudi Arabia.

The two islands are located at the entrance to the Gulf of Aqaba. Egyptian control of these islands was long viewed as giving Egypt strategic leverage over access to and from this gulf and, consequently, the Israeli Port of Eilat.

The handover to Saudi Arabia was part of a larger deal to delimit the maritime boundary between the two countries, as Egypt sought to exploit its exclusive economic zone in the Red Sea for hydrocarbons.

Dozens of protesters were promptly arrested and jailed.

Meanwhile, several local observers expressed fears that overdependence on Israeli gas makes Cairo surrender its political independence and gives Israel political leverage over Egypt's decision-making at a time of high regional tensions.

"Overdependence on Israeli gas is full of risks," Abu Eita said, warning that it can put Israel in control of the Egyptian economy as a whole. "There's a wide range of alternatives that don't entail such risks."