Egyptian Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty called yesterday for Israel to withdraw completely from Gaza and allow sustained humanitarian aid delivery under US President Donald Trump's peace plan, even as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu formally rejected the proposal Sunday, effectively ending prospects for its implementation.
Abdelatty made the demand during a telephone conversation with Nikolay Mladenov, director-general of Trump's Board of Peace, Egypt's Foreign Ministry said in a statement. The two officials reviewed efforts to implement the plan and discussed the proposed deployment of an International Stabilization Force expected to assume responsibility for security inside the Palestinian territory.
The Diplomatic Impasse
Netanyahu's rejection of the 15-point peace proposal casts further doubt on its implementation and highlights the fundamental disconnect between international expectations and Israel's security requirements in Gaza. The proposal envisions an international force taking over security responsibilities in a territory that has been controlled by Hamas since 2007 and served as a launching pad for the October 7 attacks that triggered the current conflict.
Cairo has repeatedly pressed for an Israeli withdrawal and rejected any attempt to displace Palestinians from Gaza or place the enclave under permanent Israeli control. Egypt's position reflects broader regional concerns about the conflict's trajectory but doesn't address the central question that has stalled every peace initiative: who guarantees security if Israel withdraws without Hamas being fully dismantled?
The Security Question
The proposed International Stabilization Force represents the latest attempt to solve the Gaza governance puzzle that has confounded policymakers for nearly two decades. Previous international monitoring missions in the region have struggled to prevent weapons smuggling and militant rearmament. Israel's experience with the 2005 Gaza withdrawal, which was followed by Hamas's violent takeover and years of rocket attacks, has made Israeli leaders deeply skeptical of security arrangements that don't include direct Israeli oversight.
The telephone conversation between Abdelatty and Mladenov focused on implementation mechanisms for Trump's plan, but Netanyahu's rejection means those discussions are largely theoretical. Without Israeli participation, no international force can deploy to Gaza, and without a credible security framework, Israel won't withdraw its forces from territory where militants previously operated with impunity.
Regional Dynamics
Egypt's insistence on full Israeli withdrawal and unrestricted aid access reflects Cairo's longstanding role as a mediator in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and its own security concerns along the Gaza border. The Sinai Peninsula has faced its own terrorism challenges, and Egyptian officials worry about instability spilling across their frontier. But Egypt's public demands don't always align with its private security cooperation with Israel, which has included efforts to prevent weapons smuggling through tunnels under the Egypt-Gaza border.
The gap between what Egypt calls for publicly and what Israel will accept operationally has defined Gaza diplomacy for years. That gap hasn't narrowed despite the devastation of the current conflict.
Why This Matters:
Netanyahu's rejection of Trump's peace plan and Egypt's simultaneous push for immediate Israeli withdrawal illustrate why Gaza remains diplomatically intractable. International proposals consistently envision Israeli withdrawals without credible answers to the question that dominates Israeli security thinking: who prevents the next October 7? The proposed International Stabilization Force faces the same challenge that doomed previous international missions—militant groups don't respect peacekeepers who can't or won't use force to disarm them. Israel's 2005 withdrawal from Gaza, conducted without any security guarantees, resulted in Hamas takeover and nearly two decades of rocket attacks. That experience shapes Israeli skepticism toward any plan that prioritizes withdrawal timelines over dismantling terrorist infrastructure. Egypt's role as mediator is complicated by its own interest in preventing Palestinian displacement into Sinai and maintaining the security cooperation with Israel that has helped stabilize its border region. The diplomatic stalemate reflects a deeper reality: without addressing who controls Gaza after any Israeli withdrawal and how that entity prevents rearmament, peace plans remain aspirational documents disconnected from the security realities that drive Israeli decision-making.