Egyptian embassies are extensions of the domestic security apparatus, not neutral diplomatic spaces. Over recent weeks, embassy staff and regime-aligned activists have confronted, harassed, and in some cases assaulted protesters rallying in solidarity with Palestine. In New York, videos showed officials dragging protesters, including a minor, into the mission and later handing them to the NYPD.
Similar scenes and scuffles are surfacing around Egyptian facilities in London, Amsterdam, and other cities. This is not spontaneous “patriotism” by expatriates. It is coordinated, and it follows a clear playbook exported from Cairo.
One figure at the centre of these confrontations is Ahmad Abdel Kader, known as “Mido,” who fronts the so-called Union of Egyptian Youth Abroad. He was arrested in London on 25 August after clashes with dissidents and allegations that he was carrying a knife. His deputy, Ahmad Nasser, also arrested in London, has mobilised small crews to stalk and intimidate regime critics near diplomatic compounds, before flying back to Cairo. It’s unclear if he was deported or simply returned.
Egyptian pro-government media promptly celebrated these men as defenders of the flag and claimed diplomatic pressure secured Mido’s release, although opposition sources say he remains under investigation. The signal from Cairo is unmistakable. Loyalists are encouraged to police diaspora spaces and to blur the line between consular work and coercion.
Repression from above
This export of repression is being directed from the top of the foreign-policy chain. Leaked guidance attributed to Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty urged diplomats to detain embassy protesters where possible and to turn them over to local police, with personal assurances that the ministry would shield staff who use force. That guidance tracks with the brazen behaviour we are witnessing and with the long-standing habit of Egypt’s security state to treat any political activity as a security incident.
When officials are given political cover to use their buildings as traps, abuses are inevitable.
The same week that embassies abroad were in the headlines, Cairo staged a choreographed “counter-protest” outside the Dutch Embassy after an exiled activist, Anas Habib, padlocked the gates of Egypt’s mission in The Hague to protest Cairo’s role in the Gaza blockade. Egyptian security mobilised supporters, waved placards blaming the Muslim Brotherhood, and sold the rally to domestic audiences as spontaneous fury.
At home, authorities arrested Habib’s elderly uncle, Mukhtar Tayel, and his cousin Omar on bogus terrorism charges, a familiar form of reprisal against the families of dissidents abroad. The message to exiles is as vicious as it is simple. If you embarrass us overseas, we will punish your people back home.
Call this what it is: transnational repression. In the diaspora, the regime deploys a mix of diplomatic impunity, coordinated street muscle, and disinformation to sap the cost of dissent. Inside Egypt, the same regime has methodically criminalised Palestine solidarity and any independent mobilisation since October 2023.
Hundreds of citizens were arrested for peaceful Gaza-related actions, and many remain in prison, including minors. Universities have enforced political neutrality codes that stretch into absurdity, like disciplining students and faculty for simply wearing the Palestinian keffiyeh. These rules do not preserve “order.” They erase politics from public life to protect a brittle authoritarian order from even symbolic acts of conscience.
Egypt’s complicity & normalisation with Israel
The Rafah Crossing is the clearest link between embassy-focused repression and Cairo’s complicity in Israel’s war on Gaza. From the first days of the war, Egypt sharply restricted Rafah, allowing limited aid or evacuations only with Israeli sign-off. This was not normal practice in previous wars. It was a strategic choice, and it aligned Egypt’s posture with Israel’s siege logic.
Cairo had already destroyed the Sinai tunnels that sustained Gazan life and resistance, flooding them with seawater at deadly cost. During the counterinsurgency in Sinai, Egypt even permitted the Israeli Air Force to conduct strikes on Egyptian soil, a grim milestone for “coordination.”
These policies are the backdrop to today’s embassy confrontations. Protesters know that Egypt is not a neutral mediator. They know it is part of the problem.
Follow the money, and the picture hardens. Egypt is not only enforcing a political blockade. It is deepening economic ties that bind it to Israel’s energy and trade networks. In August, Israel’s NewMed Energy amended a 2019 contract to ship dramatically more gas to Egypt, potentially extending exports through 2040, with an added 130 billion cubic meters over two phases if infrastructure is completed, in a deal that amounted to $35 billion.
The government, meanwhile, reshuffled fuel purchases once Israeli gas resumed, underscoring how energy coordination with Israel now shapes Egyptian import decisions. These are strategic commitments, not temporary fixes.
Trade has tracked politics. Amid the Gaza war, bilateral trade grew even as Israeli ports like Eilat stalled under regional pressures. Egyptian ports picked up slack, moving goods to and from Israel while Cairo’s state-aligned firms and elites kept business flowing.
Inside Egypt, ordinary people embraced boycott campaigns and solidarity actions, yet the commerce of the powerful proceeded largely undisturbed. The state’s message is that profitable normalisation is fine, public dissent is not. That is why a scarf can be contraband on a campus, but a gas deal that runs to 2040 is treated as common sense.
Holding embassies accountable
Host countries need to face the situation squarely. If diplomats or embassy-affiliated groups assault protesters, that is a criminal matter first, a diplomatic one second. Governments should insist on full investigations, deny cover stories that frame assaults as “internal” disputes, and declare offending officials persona non grata. Diaspora vigilante groups that orbit embassies are not legitimate community organisations. They are political auxiliaries of a foreign security service. Prosecutors should treat them that way.
Civil society and legal groups can raise the costs. Document every encounter outside embassies with time-stamped video, witness statements, and clear identification of perpetrators. File complaints that name both the individuals and the institutions directing them. Seek injunctions that restrict embassy-adjacent “counter-demonstrations” intended to provoke violence. Pair public-order arguments with human-rights claims about transnational repression.
Most of all, do not let Cairo isolate exiles. When regime loyalists swarm a protester, other movements should show up the next day twice as strong. That multiplier effect is how the diaspora can blunt intimidation and keep the narrative focused on Gaza and on Egypt’s role in the siege.
The foreign-policy piece matters too. Legislators in Europe and North America should be pressed to cut security cooperation with Egypt and to condition any aid on verifiable benchmarks, not promises. Joint policing programs that train or equip the very units criminalising solidarity inside Egypt are political liabilities. They should be frozen.
Energy deals and port contracts that deepen dependence on a status quo of impunity should be scrutinised in hearings and, where possible, unwound. Without external pressure, Cairo will read the embassy clashes as proof that it can bully activists abroad while cashing in at home. The only language it respects is leverage.
Finally, a word about the movement itself. Egyptians have a long history of politicisation through the Palestinian question. The January 1977 “Bread Uprising” and the 2011 revolution were preceded by years of solidarity work that turned sympathy into organisation. That process is happening again across borders. Today’s embassy protests are not marginal. They are the visible tip of a larger renewal of political life among Egyptians who refuse to be drafted into a policy of collective punishment.
The regime understands this, which is why it has sent its security state to the diaspora. The correct response is not retreat. It is to expand the circles of solidarity, link up with labour and migrant networks, and carry the fight into every institution that enables Cairo’s complicity. That is how you turn a sidewalk confrontation into a strategic setback for repression.
Egypt’s embassies are not behaving like normal missions because Egypt is not a normal state. It is a militarised regime that treats politics as a crime, solidarity as sedition, and diplomacy as an arm of domestic security. The clashes at consulates from New York to London are the international face of the same logic that bans a scarf on campus and locks up a teenager for a chant.
The struggle for Palestine and the struggle for freedom in Egypt are inseparable. If Cairo’s rulers feel safe to brutalise on both fronts, they will keep doing it. If they start to pay a price in the courts, in parliaments, and in the street, they will rethink. The choice belongs to the governments that host these embassies, and to the movements willing to make that pressure real.
Hossam el-Hamalawy is an Egyptian scholar-activist in Germany, focusing on the military, policing, and labour.
Follow Hossam on X/Twitter: @3arabawy
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Opinions expressed in this article remain those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The New Arab.