Thousands of activists from around the world are arriving in Cairo to prepare for the Global March to Gaza, which will set off on June 15. They intend to break the Israel siege by reaching the Rafah border crossing. The Egyptian regime, which claims to support Palestine, has been repressing, detaining, and deporting activists. At the same time, a land convoy traveling from Tunisia to Gaza is due to arrive on the Egyptian-Libyan border by Thursday evening, although it’s uncertain whether the convoy will be allowed to enter.
Since Wednesday night, more and more reports have come in about repression against the March to Gaza, with hundreds arrested. According to Mada Masr, 40 Algerian citizens were deported on Thursday morning after a 24-hour detention in Cairo. Meanwhile, ten activists arriving from Morocco were turned back at the airport, and several Turkish citizens were detained and deported after police observed them carrying Palestinian flags outside their hotel in Cairo. French activists visiting Cairo have also reported detentions and mistreatment by the Egyptian authorities. Activists from Argentina, Patricio del Coro and Luca Bonfante, have been reporting for our sister site La Izquierda Diario. Meanwhile, activists from our sister sites in Spain and Catalonia were deported.
The Global March to Gaza is due to set off on June 15, with 4,000 participants to be bussed to the Mediterranean city of Arish in North Sinai, where they will begin a 48 kilometer walk to Rafah, the only land crossing to Gaza outside of Israel. The organizers have said that they are seeking the necessary permissions from Egyptian embassies in their respective countries and from the Egyptian government. In a statement on Thursday afternoon, the organizers pledged to continue their march despite 170 participants “facing delays and deportations at Cairo airport.”
The only official communication from the Egyptian government came on Wednesday night, after weeks of failing to respond to permit requests. In a typically vague statement, the Egyptian foreign ministry welcomed the initiative but warned about the need to obtain official permissions. This refers to the restricted nature of North Sinai, which is strictly controlled by Egyptian security forces. Only residents are allowed to enter without special permission.
Other Attempts to Break the Siege
In the meantime, another aid convoy is bearing down on Egypt. The Sumoud Convoy (resilience in Arabic) consists of 300 vehicles carrying 7,000 North African activists down the Mediterranean coast. They set off on Monday from the Tunisian capital Tunis, and as of Thursday have reached Libya, planning to arrive at the Egyptian border town of Salloum by Thursday evening. As of now, the Egyptian government has not communicated to the Sumoud organizers if they will be allowed to enter the country.
These initiatives come a few days after the Madleen, a boat carrying aid and 12 prominent activists including Greta Thunberg, was prevented from reaching the shores of Gaza by the Israeli navy. Israel then deported some of the activists, while others are still in detention awaiting deportation, including the European parliament member Rima Hassan.
The Situation in Egypt
While the government of Abdel Fattah el-Sisi claims to support Palestine, the he repression of pro-Palestinian activism in Egypt is nothing new. Current events are nonetheless bringing global attention to the suffocating political atmosphere under the Sisi regime.
Since signing the Camp David Accords and normalizing relations with Israel in 1978, the Egyptian regime has functioned as an important security guarantor for Israel. In the Sisi era, this security cooperation has deepened, with the emergence of ISIS-affiliated terror groups in North Sinai in the latter half of the 2010s posing a threat to the security establishments in both Israel and Egypt.
Since October 2023, there have been very few public protests in Egypt against the Israeli genocide in Gaza, despite the overwhelmingly pro-Palestinian and anti-Zionist sentiment in the population. The only mass protests in solidarity with Palestine were organized by state-aligned parties a few weeks after October. But the government quickly decided that it could not risk such protests getting out of hand, after protesters left pre-approved locations and headed to Tahrir Square, the epicenter of the uprisings that culminated in the 2011 revolution. On that day of protest in October 2023, 114 people were arrested. As of June 2024, 95 of them remained in pre-trial detention.
In the aftermath of those arrests, there have been no large pro-Palestine protests in Egypt. Popular solidarity with Palestine has been widely expressed in mainstream and social media, and several boycott campaigns have sprung up and won broad support. As for actual protests, these have been limited to occasional small rallies by journalists on the steps of the Journalists Syndicate (that have been tolerated by the regime), and a few other small actions that have faced immediate repression.
Local reactions to the March to Gaza and Sumoud convoys have been mixed. Nationalist TV presenter Ahmed Moussa has accused the convoys of being a fifth column, seeking to “destabilize Egypt,” and being a Muslim Brotherhood plot. This echoes the usual accusations directed at protestors. The news outlet Darb has shared a statement by the Socialist People’s Alliance Party (0 seats in parliament) calling on the government to allow the aid convoys to reach Rafah.
Mostly, though, mainstream local news outlets in Egypt have not reported much, despite dedicating significant coverage to daily events in the Gaza strip.
Difficult Balancing Act
Despite the surprising scenes of European activists being turned away at Cairo airport, the repression of the March to Gaza comes as no shock to anyone who has been observing Egypt over the past ten years. Since coming to power, the Sisi regime has been extremely paranoid about any and all forms of public protest. Anti-government protests are out of the question, but even actions that are not explicitly critical of the government, such as labour strikes and anti-eviction protests, have seen brutal crackdowns. Even candidates running in elections and their campaign volunteers have been arrested and jailed. With the economy tanking and the daily hardships of the Egyptian working class and peasantry increasing sharply, the government is clearly afraid that even the smallest protest could spiral out of control into an anti-regime uprising.
The Sisi regime is trying to pull off a difficult balancing act. They have to criticize Israel and its genocide because the Egyptian people are extremely pro-Palestine and anti-Zionist. At the same time, they have to stick to the Camp David consensus, and serve U.S. and Israeli security interests. Egypt also derives regional importance and foreign policy prestige by being one of the only countries that can mediate between Israel and Hamas, which means that this position as an acceptable mediator to both sides must be preserved. The contradictions between these various goals can only be papered over by repressing all public mobilizations.
We will see how the March to Gaza develops in the coming days. What is certain is that this symbolic act of grassroots solidarity with Gaza is a massive challenge for the Egyptian regime.