Egypt must prepare for Israeli recklessness

Some, even many, forget that, with the exception of the 1948 war, every Arab-Israeli war began with Israeli aggression. Put to one side the press hype and Arab propaganda before the 1956 and 1967 wars about our supposed appetite for war. In reality, Israel’s appetite was more voracious all along.

Gamal Abdel Nasser certainly bears responsibility for the catastrophic defeat. He deserves blame for lack of readiness and preparation, but not for choosing war. Israel wanted to strike Egypt once the Lavon Affair was exposed in 1954. For the next two years it kept escalating until it got what it wanted through the Anglo-French alliance in the fall of 1956.

Yet some pathetic opportunists insist on starting the story of the 1967 war from the moment Nasser decided to close the Gulf of Aqaba and the Tiran and Sanafir straits, which is a retelling that mirrors the Israeli narrative, while ignoring what Tel Aviv had done over the two years before the war: diverting the Jordan River and encroaching on the waters of Lake Tiberias. Those actions led to the Arab summit in Casablanca in 1965.

After that came unrelenting air and ground incursions into Syria, like those happening now, with repeated threats from Tel Aviv’s hawks and doves alike to occupy Damascus.

If you want to blame Nasser, blame him for failing to prepare when all signs pointed towards an impending Israeli attack. Accuse him of indulging in wishful thinking and betting on a replay of 1956, when he won politically despite military setbacks. But don’t be like the cowards who support any and every surrender, and then blame him for a principled decision to confront.

The historical pattern shows Israeli aggression is disguised as a pre-emptive action against a manufactured threat. Recently, the retired US colonel from the Christian Zionist right Douglas Macgregor tweeted in March, “There are indications the Egyptians are preparing to invade Israel.”

This must be understood, within the ongoing escalation against Egypt, as an implicit warning of Israel’s intention to reoccupy Sinai. Macgregor is not necessarily an important figure and may represent only the most extreme and reckless voices, but even he would not have said such a thing a year ago.

We must take seriously everything emanating from religious nationalist Zionists in Israel and Christian Zionists in the US. The Israel of socialist kibbutzim is gone for good. Today we border a country ruled by mythology and religious mania, in strategic alliance with the most right-wing and violent current in American politics—a current that is antisemitic, yet its genocidal and apocalyptic tendencies transcend any limit or imagination.

If you consider these people insane, remember that they have never had a larger share in decision-making. Any lingering trace of earlier rationality, borne of Israel’s secular state legacy, ended on Oct. 7. Since then, this entity’s only path to survival—given its current balances of power and putrid ideological stage—is to activate its aggressive instincts.

I do not want war; no one does. But we must not think wishfully or submerge ourselves, as we always have, in the canals and drains of denial—only to pile one defeat upon another. We must prepare and treat this possibility with utmost seriousness, as a plausible scenario in the years ahead.

Perhaps one of the truest things Hosni Mubarak used to repeat was that 1967 wouldn’t happen again. That was his aim and his hope. By that phrase, he meant we would not be dragged into war, nor call for it, but we would be prepared for it. Yet avoiding conflict and appeasement will not prevent war if Israel and the US continue on their present course.

Any future clash with Israel will not resemble conflicts of the second half of the 20th century; highly contained and regulated wars that lasted only days or weeks. Those were governed by rules of engagement and a degree of restraint, because the Cold War superpowers pulled the strings.

That era is over. Any coming war with Israel will be long, bitter, and costly—beyond what pampered Egypt and the wealthy elite can bear. Ordinary Egyptians, now better educated and more socially aware than their defeated forebears, will not sacrifice their lives unless it is for a struggle that translates their sacrifices into a better, fairer life.

"Egypt must prepare" does not refer to the residents of gated communities or Mohamed Sami’s TV dramas' false representations of the lives and morals of the true people of Egypt. Egypt will not confront Israel with the macho posturing of Ahmed Elawady’s hyper-masculinity and Amr Saad’s bellowing, nor with bourgeois groups that hate everything Arab, brag over the Pharaonic past, and some of whom speak only English. These are certain recipes for defeat.

"Egypt must prepare" refers to a decisive halt to the open-ended Emirati penetration that has gnawed at the national body. They’ve deafened our ears with talk of “fifth columns” while this is the fifth column.

No rational person wants war in a floundering country exhausted by corruption and debt. But it seems that Israel has made activating its aggressive traits a condition for its survival in its current deranged religious phase. We can temporarily avoid war by pushing the conflict elsewhere, but we now see Israel seriously harassing Syria, with no real aim other than aggression for its own sake.

The defeat of 1967 will not happen again, even if we must fight with our fingernails. We will not lose the passes or the Abu Ageila axes. But this requires a domestic front unlike the one we have now: more serious, clear-sighted, and responsible; more rational and materialist. It must begin at the point where the hardest decisions are taken. There is no room for wishful thinking or Pharaonic nostalgia.

Otherwise, Egypt will face existential dangers, perhaps unlike anything it has known before, and the price may be far higher than that of any bitter conflict with Israel, whatever its cost.

(*) A version of this article first appeared in Arabic on March 13, 2025