Latest news with #el-Sisi
Jordan News
07-05-2025
- Business
- Jordan News
The Presidents of Egypt and Greece Confirm Continued Coordination to Restore Regional Stability - Jordan News
Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi met with Greek President Konstantinos Tasoulas to discuss regional issues of mutual interest, primarily the latest developments in Gaza, Syria, Libya, Yemen, and the security of maritime navigation in the Red Sea, as well as ways to avoid regional escalation and enhance joint efforts to combat illegal immigration. اضافة اعلان In this regard, the two presidents emphasized the importance of continuing coordination and consultation between Egypt and Greece to ensure the achievement of de-escalation and the restoration of stability in the region. This occurred during a meeting between the Egyptian President on Wednesday, at the Presidential Palace in Athens, where official welcoming ceremonies were held for President el-Sisi at the start of his visit to Greece. The Greek president expressed his country's great appreciation for Egypt, highlighting Greece's commitment to strengthening its relationship with Egypt in line with the size of the existing partnership between the two countries, especially given Egypt's pivotal role in establishing regional security and stability and addressing the region's crises. This underscores Egypt's strategic importance as a key partner to the European Union. Ambassador Mohamed El-Shenawy, spokesperson for the Egyptian presidency, explained that the meeting confirmed the momentum in bilateral relations, demonstrated by the holding of the first high-level cooperation council meeting between Egypt and Greece during the visit, alongside the signing of a joint declaration on the strategic partnership between the two countries and several agreements to enhance cooperation in various fields. This reflects the mutual desire to elevate bilateral relations to deeper and broader levels. The spokesperson added that President el-Sisi confirmed during the meeting Egypt's interest in the distinguished partnership with Greece, which represents a strong foundation for bilateral and regional cooperation. Egypt is keen to enhance joint cooperation with Greece in the fields of economy, trade, tourism, and culture, as well as energy, transport, and electricity interconnection. This is especially significant with the implementation of the electricity interconnection project between Egypt and Greece, which represents a qualitative leap in bilateral relations and opens new horizons for transferring clean electricity from Egypt to Europe for the first time.
Al Etihad
05-03-2025
- Politics
- Al Etihad
Egyptian President unveils plan to rebuild Gaza
4 Mar 2025 21:04 CAIRO (WAM) Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi called for adopting a plan to rebuild Gaza, asserting that Cairo opposes the displacement of Palestinians."The aggression on Gaza is a stain in the history of humanity," he said, adding that the Israeli war aimed to empty the Strip of its population. The Egyptian President made the remarks in his opening speech of the Extraordinary Arab Summit on the Palestinian Cause hosted in Cairo earlier today."It is time to present a path to peace that leads to the establishment of a Palestinian state in accordance with the resolutions of international legitimacy," he el-Sisi announced that Egypt will host an international conference on Gaza reconstruction next month and called on the international community to participate his speech, King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa, of Bahrain emphasised that lasting peace is the only guarantee for the Palestinian people to attain their rights. He also urged support for Egypt's plan for Gaza construction and reaffirmed his rejection of any attempts to displace the Palestinian of the Arab League Ahmed Aboul Gheit described the Extraordinary Arab Summit in Cairo as "a significant event in the history of the Palestinian cause." "Maintaining the occupation system will only bring temporary and fragile stability," he said, noting that the Palestinian people have lost all means to live a normal life and are living a painful reality due to the Israeli war on Gaza.
New York Times
31-01-2025
- Politics
- New York Times
Egypt Fears Syria's Revolutionary Fervor Could Be Contagious
Soon after Islamist rebels overthrew the authoritarian president of Syria, Bashar al-Assad, a hashtag gathered steam on Egyptian social media: 'It's your turn, dictator.' The message for President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi of Egypt was unmistakable. But he hardly needed the warning. Since the ouster of Syria's longtime dictator on Dec. 8, Egyptian leaders have watched events in the Syrian capital, Damascus, with grim-faced vigilance, knowing well that revolutionary fire has a tendency to spread. Both countries have had a turbulent history since the Arab Spring uprisings that started in late 2010 and spread across the Middle East. The Syrian revolt culminated almost 14 years later with Mr. al-Assad's fall. The Egyptian revolution deposed the country's longtime authoritarian president, Hosni Mubarak, and saw an Islamist political party come to power in the country's first free elections. Mr. el-Sisi seized power two years later in a military takeover, and he and like-minded leaders in the Persian Gulf and beyond remain wary of Islamist groups gaining any power in the region, as they just did in Syria. Days after Mr. al-Assad fled Syria for Russia, Egyptian security forces arrested at least 30 Syrian refugees living in Cairo who were spontaneously celebrating his fall, according to the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, a rights group. The Egyptian authorities also made it harder for Syrians to travel to Egypt in the aftermath of Mr. al-Assad's overthrow, requiring most to obtain security clearances first. Mr. el-Sisi has given unusually frequent addresses in recent weeks to defend his record. 'My hands have never been stained with anyone's blood, and I have never taken anything that wasn't mine,' he said in December, a week after Mr. al-Assad fell. In doing so, he seemed to draw a contrast with the deposed Syrian leader while brushing aside his own human rights record, including a massacre by the Egyptian military forces that he led of what rights groups say were at least 817 people protesting Mr. el-Sisi's takeover of power in 2013. Since the rebels in Syria seized power, Egypt has arrested or began prosecuting several people considered political opponents, including the director of a prominent rights group, the wife of a detained political cartoonist and a TikTok user who had been posting videos critical of Mr. el-Sisi. Egypt already was holding an estimated tens of thousands of political prisoners, many of them Islamists. 'Two thousand and eleven is only 14 years away,' said Mirette F. Mabrouk, an Egypt expert at the Middle East Institute in Washington, referring to the year of the Egyptian revolution. The Egyptian authorities, she said, 'know that things snowball.' After years of deepening economic misery across Egypt, Mr. el-Sisi was already in an acutely vulnerable position. Any hint that Egyptians could catch Syrians' revolutionary fervor spells trouble — not because Egyptians want armed revolt, Ms. Mabrouk said, but because it could take very little for their disgruntlement to explode into protest. The most visible attempt to capitalize on the moment has come from Ahmed al-Mansour, an Egyptian who left the country to fight with Syrian rebels years ago. After Mr. al-Assad's ouster, he repeatedly ranted against Mr. el-Sisi online from Damascus. 'You're worth one bullet,' Mr. al-Mansour said of Mr. el-Sisi in a video posted on X. It was viewed 1.5 million times. The threat sent Egypt's TV anchors, who often amplify pro-government talking points on their nightly broadcasts, into an uproar. One host, Ahmed Moussa, called on Syria's new leaders to act. 'They must tell us if they are with what is happening in the targeting of our country or not,' he warned. Shortly after his tirade in mid-January, the new Syrian authorities arrested Mr. al-Mansour along with several associates. He was detained on his way to a meeting with the country's interim defense minister, according to a statement from the anti-Sisi movement Mr. al-Mansour founded. It is unclear whether Egyptian authorities had pushed for his arrest. Mr. al-Mansour's group urged the Syrian authorities to release him, saying that the Egyptian people were exercising their rights against Mr. el-Sisi just as Syrians had done against Mr. al-Assad. His current status is unknown. But even with Mr. al-Mansour silenced for now, other Egyptians are unlikely to stop complaining. Many have soured on Mr. el-Sisi after years of economic crises, the most recent of which was triggered by the successive shocks of the wars in Ukraine and Gaza. But the problems are also rooted in government mismanagement and overspending, including on grandiose megaprojects. With Egypt deep in debt and losing revenue, the currency has crashed, some goods have become difficult to find and inflation has soared. Such hardships have suffocated a population of about 111 million where nearly one in three already lived in poverty, according to official statistics. Mr. el-Sisi has tried to shield himself from criticism, saying in a recent speech that the country was already in bad financial shape when he took over in 2013 and that Egypt's rapid population growth had made it difficult to provide for his citizens. But he had spent years boasting of the prosperity he would bring to Egypt — prosperity that never came, even as he inaugurated a costly new capital city complete with a gleaming presidential palace. 'People are seriously discontented, and therefore he's trying out there to just tamp things down,' Ms. Mabrouk said. In the beginning, many hailed the president as a hero and savior for using military force to oust the Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamist political party that won the presidency following the 2011 Egyptian revolution but went on to alienate much of the population. Mr. el-Sisi spent the ensuing years stamping out the Brotherhood in Egypt, viewing it as a threat to his power. Egyptian authorities prosecuted thousands of Brotherhood members and suspected sympathizers, labeling them terrorists, while others have fled the country. Even weakened, political Islamists remain a popular target for Mr. el-Sisi and his supporters, who frequently invoke the dangers of political Islam. So it was unsurprising when the Egyptian authorities sounded a note of caution about the lightning rise of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, the Islamist rebel group that has taken charge in Syria. The group was once affiliated with Al Qaeda but has disavowed its extremist origins. Egypt may have had little love for Mr. al-Assad, analysts said, but it had come to prefer the brittle stability he represented to the chaos and conflict that surround Egypt in Libya, Sudan and Gaza. It has therefore approached relations with the new Syria gingerly. Unlike other Arab countries, Egypt has not yet held high-level meetings with Syrian officials. Diplomats in Cairo say Egyptian officials have privately urged other governments to remain wary of Syria's new leadership and not to lift penalties on the country too quickly. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly. Egypt's foreign minister, Badr Abdelatty, has called on regional and international partners to ensure that 'Syria does not become a source of regional instability or a haven for terrorist groups.' Mahmoud Badr, an Egyptian pro-government activist who helped foster the anti-Muslim Brotherhood protest movement that paved the way for Mr. el-Sisi's ascension, said on X soon after Hayat Tahrir al-Sham swept into Damascus that the group and the Brotherhood were indistinguishable. 'It's all part of one network and no one can convince us otherwise,' he said, citing widely circulated photos that showed the leader of the Syrian group meeting with a prominent Egyptian member of the Brotherhood. And though anti-Islamist sentiment remains strong among Egyptians, so does anti-Sisi sentiment. 'It comes at a very bad time for Sisi,' said Broderick McDonald, an associate fellow at Kings College London's International Center for the Study of Radicalization.
Al Jazeera
29-01-2025
- Politics
- Al Jazeera
Egypt's el-Sisi rejects Trump's suggestion to take in Palestinians
President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi has said Egypt will not participate in the displacement of Palestinians, days after United States President Donald Trump suggested that Arab countries take in Palestinians from the war-torn Gaza Strip. 'Regarding what is being said about the displacement of Palestinians, it can never be tolerated or allowed because of its impact on Egyptian national security,' el-Sisi told a press conference on Wednesday. 'The deportation or displacement of the Palestinian people is an injustice in which we cannot participate,' he said. Almost all of Gaza's 2.2 million residents have been displaced at least once since Israel launched its war on the territory in October 2023 in response to a Hamas-led attack on southern Israel. After the Israel-Hamas ceasefire took effect earlier this month, Trump touted a plan to 'clean out' the Gaza Strip and relocate its residents to Jordan and Egypt. He returned to the idea this week, calling for Palestinians to move to 'safer' locations such as Egypt or Jordan. Moving Gaza's inhabitants could be done 'temporarily, or could be long term', he said. But the idea of relocating Palestinians has long been rejected by Palestinians and regional countries, who say it would undermine the notion of Palestinian statehood and foment instability in the Middle East. Jordan's Minister of Foreign Affairs Ayman Safadi has also rejected Trump's suggestion, saying 'Jordan is for Jordanians and Palestine is for Palestinians'. Fear of displacement El-Sisi said his government would work with the Trump administration to achieve peace between Israel and Palestine 'that is based on the two-state solution'. 'The solution… is the establishment of a Palestinian state,' el-Sisi said. 'The solution is not to remove the Palestinian people from their place.' Displacement has been a recurrent theme in Palestinian history and inhabitants of the Gaza Strip fear that if they leave, they may never be allowed to return. Since the start of Israel's 15-month war on Gaza, Arab countries have repeatedly warned against any plans to push Palestinians into neighbouring countries, saying such a move would be reminiscent of the Nakba in 1948, when hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were forcibly displaced during the fighting that surrounded the creation of the Israeli state. Egypt and Jordan have peace agreements with Israel and also support the creation of a Palestinian state in the occupied West Bank, Gaza and east Jerusalem. They fear that the permanent displacement of Gaza's population could make a future state harder to realise.
