Egypt Security Sector Report
This week’s dispatch tracks the deepening militarization and corruption reshaping Egypt and its role abroad. I follow the fallout from Israel’s Gaza assault, where Cairo’s complicity grows harder to ignore, and highlight how Sisi is turning imams into soldiers and heritage sites into rubble. Egypt’s senior brass tighten their grip—from the air force taking over agriculture, to Organi and Sisi’s family brokering billion-dollar deals with China. Meanwhile, a torturer rises to head Cairo’s Homeland Security, and Egypt’s man for UNESCO is—no joke—the official overseeing the destruction of Cairo’s history. Strap in.
📁 Palestine
Israel attacked on Tuesday a Jabalia garage housing heavy vehicles from the Civil Defense, some of which had been supplied by Egypt during the last ceasefire.
An investigation by Israel’s public broadcaster KAN has revealed that the Israeli military fabricated the discovery of a tunnel in the Philadelphi Corridor along the Gaza-Egypt border, asserting that the structure was, in fact, a shallow canal.
Hundreds of Palestinians have recently been allowed to emigrate from Gaza to France and Germany under a “family reunification scheme,” according to two emigrants and an Egyptian official briefed on the arrangements, who spoke with Mada Masr.
Over 200 Palestinian prisoners released from Israeli jails as part of a ceasefire deal have been living under tight restrictions in Cairo hotels since January 2025. Deported instead of returned home, many signed documents barring them from the West Bank, with some prohibited from contact with Palestinian factions. Although welcomed by Egypt temporarily with Qatari financial backing, it has not been easy to find a third country that has agreed to host them permanently—Turkey and Malaysia have taken in some. The prisoners describe their status as “freedom without freedom,” confined under surveillance and without clear prospects for resettlement or reunion with families.
Residents of North Sinai regularly post on social media that their homes shake and windows almost shatter because of the ferocity of Israeli bombing in neighboring Gaza.
Dozens of Egyptians stranded in Gaza held a protest on Thursday, demanding Cairo’s assistance with their evacuation.
Hamas is open to a years-long truce with Israel in Gaza but is not willing to lay down its arms, an official said on Saturday, as leaders of the Palestinian resistance group met mediators in Cairo for ceasefire talks.