Egypt Security Sector Report
This week’s dispatch captures the deepening contradictions shaping Egypt’s political landscape. While high-level negotiations over Gaza continue in Cairo, and a new presidential aircraft completes its test flights in Germany, mounting unrest slowly unfolds at home. Lawyers staged a nationwide boycott, workers and residents protested economic hardship and displacement, and a leftist dissident secured a second term as Journalists Syndicate head, defying regime-backed mobilization. At the same time, the state expanded its military footprint across new sectors—from inland fisheries and agriculture to tech and religious institutions—underscoring a broader strategy of consolidation. This week’s developments reflect both the resilience of organized dissent and the regime’s tightening grip across every domain of public life.
📁 Palestine
The Israeli army announced on Tuesday that it thwarted an attempt to smuggle ten M16 rifles and ammunition from Egypt via a drone. On Thursday, another drone, also carrying ten M16 rifles, was intercepted.
Official data obtained by Arabic Post shows Egypt’s cement exports to Israel surged from $17.6 million in the year before the Gaza war to $223.3 million between October 2023 and February 2025—a 13-fold increase. In December 2023 alone, exports reached $35.5 million, accounting for 80% of Egypt’s monthly cement exports. Egypt now supplies 25% of Israel’s cement imports, becoming its third-largest supplier. Ship tracking data confirms regular deliveries from the military-controlled Port of Arish to Israeli ports such as Haifa and Ashdod, even as other countries halted trade in protest of the war.
Cairo hosted visiting delegations from Hamas, Israel, and Qatar while coordinating with Doha and Ankara on talks and meetings aimed at securing a ceasefire in Gaza. Another week of negotiations yielded hardly any outcome to share with the world. Egyptian sources told al-Ahram that discussions remain focused on a brief truce before US President Trump’s expected visit to the region in mid-May. Proposals on the table include limited hostage releases and humanitarian aid delivery; however, Israel has reportedly blocked more ambitious plans involving political restructuring in Gaza.
Netanyahu’s office on Friday denied reports that Israel rejected a hostage-ceasefire deal, after Egyptian sources told al-Arabiya that Israel had backed out of previously agreed terms.
A new report by the Sinai Foundation for Human Rights documents a significant Israeli military buildup along the Egypt-Gaza border. The report highlights the deployment of tanks behind sand fortifications and the use of fixed surveillance balloons resembling the Sky Dew system for advanced aerial monitoring. These developments come amid Israeli claims of thwarting multiple drone smuggling attempts from Sinai. Satellite imagery also shows the establishment of a large tent camp near the Philadelphi Corridor, marketed by Israel as a “humanitarian zone.” The report warns that such actions may violate the Camp David Accords and reflect a growing erosion of mutual trust.
Egypt’s Gaza reconstruction plan is essentially a pacification scheme.
📁 The Red Sea
Egypt has rejected proposed formulas for a permanent US military foothold on the Red Sea, according to multiple Egyptian, European, and regional officials who spoke to Mada Masr. The Biden and Trump administrations have both pressured Cairo to contribute financially or militarily to Washington’s campaign against Houthi forces in Yemen, amid rising attacks on commercial shipping in the Red Sea. Cairo, however, has declined, citing economic constraints and unwillingness to be dragged into a costly and unpopular conflict.
One proposal reportedly involved establishing a US base on Tiran and Sanafir islands—territory Egypt ceded to Saudi Arabia in 2016. While Riyadh is said to have supported the idea, Cairo remains deeply divided over the strategic implications. Egyptian officials worry a US base could damage relations with China and Russia, both of which hold significant investments in the Suez Canal region, and could destabilize existing security arrangements in Sinai.
Sisi’s regime fears that acceding to US demands would further erode Egypt’s regional role, one that is already severely eroded, especially as Israel and Saudi Arabia move toward closer security cooperation. A senior Egyptian official told Mada Masr that Egypt will not support any initiative that could “threaten peace and stability in the Middle East” or repeat the strategic missteps of its past intervention in Yemen.
📁 Leftist Dissident Re-elected Press Syndicate Head, Opposition Maintains Majority
Khaled el-Balshy secured a second term as head of Egypt’s Press Syndicate on Friday, defeating regime-backed candidate Abdel Mohsen Salama by 784 votes, with a total of 3,346 ballots cast in his favor.
The election, which also renewed half the board’s seats, saw regime-backed candidates win four out of six contested positions. However, leftist journalist Eman Ouf and Nasserist-leaning Mohamed Saad Abdel Hafiz won the remaining two, preserving a slight non-regime majority in the syndicate leadership:
Four newly elected pro-government members + two already members from the previous election who are nominally independent but tend to side with the regime in decisive moments—now sit on a 12-member board whose remaining six members are independents or opposition-aligned figures + Balshy, the president.
Balshy, a veteran leftist and editor, is widely respected among journalists for his principled stances on press freedom and solidarity with detained colleagues. His victory—once again achieved despite mobilization by the security apparatus—marks another rare political setback for the regime. With the syndicate long viewed as a bellwether for civil dissent, the result signals lingering opposition under the surface of authoritarian control.
Egypt continues to be one of the world’s biggest jailers of journalists.
📁 Lawyers Stage Nationwide Protests; Strike Looming
Egyptian lawyers intensified their protest against new court-related fees by boycotting all court payment offices nationwide. The syndicate board agreed yesterday to initiate a one-day national strike from attending appellate courts on Thursday, 8 May.
Lawyers in Cairo, Giza, and multiple governorates, from Assiut to Alexandria, refused to pay judicial fees earlier on 29 April, leaving usually crowded courthouse treasury windows empty. The Lawyers Syndicate called the one-day shutdown to press for scrapping the recently imposed “mechanization service” charges, which lawyers argue were introduced without a legal basis.
Syndicate leaders contend that the fees violate the constitution since no law has authorized these charges. Board member Abu Bakr Doue said the authorities’ refusal to cancel the fees left lawyers no choice but to escalate, leading to the nationwide payment strike.
The lawyers’ actions follow earlier mobilizations: In December 2022, thousands of lawyers protested a new digital tax system, and in January 2023, the Lawyers Syndicate staged a national strike after six attorneys were jailed following a courtroom dispute, quickly securing their release.