Egypt Security Sector Report

This week’s dispatch includes reports on Egypt and the regional wars in Palestine and Syria, as well as Sinai, the GIS media reshuffle, military business, foreign military cooperation, the militarization of the justice system, prisons, and security crackdowns.

📁 Palestine

• A source close to Hamas told Asharq on Monday that the Hamas delegation, headed by Khalil al-Hayya, delivered a preliminary list of names of “living Israeli detainees” to Egyptian GIS chief Maj. Gen. Hassan Rashad during the Cairo meeting on Sunday. The source said that the list includes “4 or 5 detainees who most likely hold dual US citizenship.”

• Shin Bet Director Ronen Bar and IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi traveled to Cairo on Tuesday to meet Rashad of the GIS, an Israeli official told the Times of Israel, confirming a report in the Walla Israeli news outlet. The discussions included attempts to reach a hostage deal and the situation at the Egypt-Gaza border. According to Maariv, the situation in Syria was also part of the agenda for the meeting.

• An Egyptian government source told al-Ahram Weekly on Wednesday

“We are making progress, helped by the flexibility that Hamas has been showing since Hizbullah agreed a deal to end the Israeli war on the South of Lebanon, but a full and comprehensive ceasefire deal is still a tough thing to achieve,” the government source said. He suggested that while a truce is possible, a full ceasefire is not.
Any truce, he added, should allow for a beginning to the end of the war. Though it will not evolve into a ceasefire anytime soon, it will get there eventually, “now that Israel is confident that it had firmly degraded the powers of Hamas.”
The government source said the deal currently in the works could be indirectly facilitated by the ouster of Syria’s Bashar Al-Assad in the early hours of 8 December.
“Hamas is now without regional backers. Despite tense relations with Damascus over Bashar’s reaction to the democracy protests in 2011, it still perceived Syria as part of the ‘resistance axis’,” said the source. “And now the axis is entirely dismantled.”

• Sisi discussed the Gaza cease-fire and hostage deal negotiations Saturday in Cairo with US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan and US National Security Council Coordinator for the Middle East and North Africa Brett McGurk, in the presence of the US Ambassador to Cairo Hero Mustafa Garg, Egyptian FM Badr Abdelatty, and the GIS director.

📁 Syria

• The Egyptian Foreign Ministry condemned on Monday Israel’s seizure of the demilitarized zone with Syria and the adjacent commanding sites as “an occupation of Syrian lands and a blatant violation of Syria’s sovereignty.”

• FM Abdelatty and his Turkish counterpart Hakan Fidan discussed in a phone call on Tuesday the “necessity of initiating a political process to restore Syria’s stability.” On the same day, Abdelatty condemned, during a phone call with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Tuesday, Israel’s seizure of a Syrian territory, describing it as an occupation and pressing for international action to halt this aggression.

• The Egyptian Foreign Ministry condemned on Wednesday Israel’s continued targeting of Syria’s infrastructure and military bases.

• Following an Egyptian initiative, the clinically dead Arab League on Friday condemned the Israeli army for expanding its occupation of the Golan Heights and striking Syrian military and civilian targets.

• At least 30 Syrians were detained by the Egyptian police on 8 and 9 December, after spontaneously celebrating Assad’s fall in 6 October City, northwest of Cairo. Some were released. Others face the threat of deportation. With an estimated 1.5 million Syrians in Egypt, they form the second-largest foreign community in the country after Sudanese nationals.

• While the Egyptian regime remains reserved in its public statements, focusing mainly on the need for stability and Syrian unity, its publicists in the GIS-run outlets and on social media are denouncing the rebels’ takeover and warning the worst is yet to come.

• Sisi is undoubtedly nervous. He met yesterday at the MOD Strategic Command HQ in the New Administrative Capital with military commanders, senior police officials, the GIS chief, the prime minister, and a bunch of top-level government officials to discuss the impact of the regional wars in Syria and Gaza.

Source: Egyptian Presidential Spokesperson.

📁 Sinai

• The trial of 54 Sinai tribesmen started on Monday, 9 December, in front of a military tribunal in Ismailia, roughly a year after they had been arrested by the army for taking part in protests during October 2023 to demand the right of return to their demolished towns of Rafah and Sheikh Zuwayid. The trial concluded swiftly on Saturday, sentencing 12 defendants—including tribal leader Saber al-Sayyah—to seven years in prison and 42 defendants to three years in jail. Another eight defendants were convicted in absentia and handed down a seven-year prison sentence.