Why let a genocide get in the way of business?

Egyptian, UAE and Jordanian exports to Israel soar in 2024

An Egyptian soldier at the Taba Crossing 430km north-east of Cairo.

A recent report published by the Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics reveals foreign trade by country and demonstrates an increase in imports from the US by 28.5 %. No need to guess what those imports might include.

Egyptian exports to Israel doubled in 2024 compared to the previous year despite Egypt’s role as “peace” mediator between the Zionist genocidaires and the Palestinian Resistance factions in Gaza. While Israel has been conducting hourly massacres in Gaza, bombing entire swathes of essential infrastructure, decimating healthcare, water desalination plants, schools, refugee centres, UN agency buildings, internet grids and slaughtering children in the most barbaric and merciless ways - Egypt has been benefitting from an increase in trade with the genocidal, apartheid settler state of Israel.

The data published on Thursday showed that Egyptian exports in May 2024 stood at $25m, double that of the same period in 2023.

Energy and security cooperation between the two countries has intensified since October. This includes the export of what is effectively stolen Palestinian gas to Egypt which has also increased exponentially in the last 12 months.

All this has been quietly going on while Egypt appears to profess distaste at the Zionist savagery in Gaza, made possible with US-manufactured bombs and UK, Canadian and EU political advocacy for genocide. How much of this “humanitarian” posturing is to be trusted in the light of their economic adventurism with Israel?

From an article in Middle East Eye:

Israel’s trade with Egypt grew by 56 percent in 2023 and was up 168 percent year-on-year in the fourth quarter, according to the Abraham Accords Peace Institute report. In 2022, the two countries set a target for annual trade at around $700 million by 2025, up from about $300 million in 2021.

It is recognised, in the region, that Egypt was quite happy to maintain the closure of the Rafah crossing into Gaza on the pretext of preventing arms being sent to the Resistance forces (a measure that benefits Israel) while, in reality, preventing the delivery of essential humanitarian aid into the Gaza extermination camp.

Since October 7th, Jordan has provided the air-space for Israel to carry out unlawful attacks on Syria and provided air-defence during the Iranian retaliation for the Zionist bombing of the Iranian Consulate building in the Embassy compound in Damascus.

Jordanian exports to Israel also continued to rise in 2024, reaching $35.7m in May 2024 compared to $32.3m in the same period last year. 

Concurrently the report details increased exports from the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to Israel - $242m in May 2024, compared to $238.5m in May 2023. The UAE has also provided the land bridge for the Zionist entity to counter the Red Sea blockade enforced by Ansarullah in Yemen to pressure the US and Israel to end the genocide in Gaza and the Occupied Territories.

The race to normalise relations with the genocidal Zionist entity was always going to be the priority for the countries that depend upon good relations with Israel and the US for their economic development, debt relief and defence alliances. Egypt has led this normalisation alliance since 1979 and the Camp David Accords.

A recent article in Al Akhbar points out that normalisation with such an apartheid, oppressive, racist and genocidal entity is actually a violation of international law.

The aim is to consolidate and reformulate settlement colonialism by normalizing the system of power and domination that contradicts everything that is natural and ordinary. In this way, the peoples of the region are being conditioned to accept normal relations with Israel without a just solution to the Palestinian issue and to accept the occupation, apartheid and war crimes. […] It is not possible to normalize with systems that violate international law, human rights and existence.

Al Akhbar argues that normalisation with Israel involves collaboration in a crime that has been ongoing for more than 75 years, against the Palestinians. A crime that has included decades of ethnic cleansing, the prohibition of the right to return for indigenous people expelled from their homes and land, ongoing massacres, torture, abuse, apartheid, rape, illegal settlement, detention of Palestinians and occupation, the construction of an apartheid wall. All crimes that have been declared crimes under international law.

Normalisation with the Zionist entity deprives the Palestinian people of their legitimate rights under international law, rights that include above all, self determination. Normalisation has provided concessions for the Zionist entity by legitimising their crimes and effectively disappearing Palestinian rights in parallel. The countries responsible for normalistion with Israel must also bear responsibility for the reparations that must eventually be paid to the Palestinian people when justice is finally served.

Normalising relations or maintaining existing economic/trade relations with Israel while the apartheid state is committing a de facto genocide is abhorrent and unlawful - what concrete steps have these countries taken to prevent and punish genocide under the Genocide Convention? Yemen has clearly stated its intent to do just this, Egypt, UAE and Jordan have paid lip service to the Convention, little else.

MEE has interviewed Egyptian soldiers who have said “their country has failed Gaza”

We train day and night, and repeat marching chants against the Zionist enemy, and we hear dedicated newsletters bragging about how ready the military is, but when this enemy is killing thousands of our brothers, we sit idle.

In the coastal city of Alexandria Egyptian security forces arrested 250 Al Ahly football fans after they had been chanting pro-Palestine slogans during the match.

The fans were detained during their team's match against Farco on Friday, according to the Egyptian Commission for Rights and Freedoms (ECRF) - Children aged 13 and 15 were among those detained.

The Sisi regime is renowned for strong-arm tactics to suppress dissent in Egypt since Sisi rose to power in 2013 but the genocide in Gaza and Egypt’s continued normalisation with the Zionist regime may just be enough to tip the popular scales against the regime.

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