Gaza as Egypt’s time bomb: How Israel continues to enable its own strategic nightmare

For over 77 years, the Gaza Strip has functioned as a strategic time bomb deliberately placed by the Arab Republic of Egypt in 1948, remaining under its indirect control since the Oslo Accords. With the exception of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), every single Palestinian terrorist organization has been either created, directed, or supported through Egypt.

Throughout modern Zionist history, Gaza has served as the primary hub of armed resistance against Israel. This is evident from its role in some of the fiercest battles during the War of Independence, its status as a terror hotbed between 1949 and 1967, and its influence as the ideological and political origin of three intifadas: the first (1970–1971), the second (1987), and the third (2001–present). Gaza is also the only place where Israel has waged 19 military operations, 15 of them since the 2005 disengagement.

Yet Gaza itself does not have the independent capacity for such sustained warfare. It is merely part of Egypt’s broader strategic time bomb, a proxy insurgency fueled and supported along the Cairo–El-Arish–Rafah axis, providing logistical, military, and theological backing for perpetual war against Israel.

This axis has undergone multiple transformations over the decades. In the 1940s, it saw the rise of Muslim Brotherhood brigades; in the 1950s, the Fedayeen; in the 1960s, Ahmed Shukeiri’s PLO army; in the 1970s, Fatah-led PLO militias; and in the 1980s, it became the corridor for Hamas and Islamic Jihad leaders moving north from Cairo. By the 1990s, it became clear how the network functioned both above and below the surface, shaping the strategic battlefield that Israel continues to face today.

With the exception of five quiet years (1982–1987, during which Hamas was being built), Gaza has continuously served as a weapons depot and a legitimization hub for the Palestinian-Islamist death cult.

Why Has Gaza Always Been a Hub of Terror?

The answer is simple: Palestinian terror in Gaza serves an Egyptian doctrinal and strategic interest.

Egypt’s motivations include keeping Israel engaged in constant low-intensity conflict, justifying a deeper Egyptian military presence in the Sinai Peninsula, undermining Israel’s internal stability, providing an outlet for nationalist and Islamist reactionary forces within Egypt, and maintaining economic leverage through illicit trade, including weapons, drugs, human trafficking, and contraband.

Egypt views Gaza as an efficient sabotage mechanism. Those who fail to recognize this reality are living in an illusion. My mother, a U.S. native who had not watched the news in 20 years, identified it on October 7. Yet, Israel’s national security establishment refuses to internalize it—even in March 2025.

Israel Ignored the Warnings—Even from Its Own Leaders

Those who foresaw this dynamic were not radical ideologues but rather leaders of Israel’s historical Labor movement—individuals like Golda Meir, Haim Bar-Lev, Shlomo Hillel, and even the left-wing Raanan Weitz. These figures recognized, decades in advance, what Israel’s leadership today refuses to acknowledge.

In January 1978, Bar-Lev warned that Gaza would become a base for terrorist operations benefiting from an Egyptian logistical rear, describing it as "a constant source of unrest and hostility" in his article "Israel Must Not Give Up the Rafah Salient."

Raanan Weitz, despite his far-left political stance, bluntly warned: "There must be no doubt about the danger of a direct land connection between Gaza and Egypt. The population pressure in Egypt, combined with Gaza’s strategic position, makes this area an enormous geopolitical time bomb and a grave threat to Israel’s existence."

These statements were made despite the fact that they risked undermining the Camp David negotiations between Begin and Sadat.

Shlomo Hillel, also a Labor leader, argued: "Our settlement in Gaza was meant to sever the connection between Gaza’s half-million Arabs and Egypt. Giving up this severance will create a continuous territorial link between them and Egypt. This will bring the Egyptian border right to the outskirts of Ashkelon, and when Gaza becomes a hornet’s nest of terror, Ashkelon will be its first victim."

The conclusion is clear: The only Israeli leaders who truly understood Egypt’s intentions were from the Labor movement.

In contrast, the Likud leadership—then and now—has fundamentally failed to grasp Egypt’s role in perpetuating the Gaza conflict, let alone neutralize the time bomb it created. It is also important to note that in 1971, under Labor leadership, thousands of Palestinian families were transferred to El-Arish in a limited relocation effort—a measure later abandoned by successive Israeli governments.

The October 7 Earthquake and Egypt’s Response

The Hamas attack on October 7 shook Egypt’s grip on Gaza. In response, Cairo increased its military presence in the Sinai Peninsula, fearing that its carefully planted demographic-military time bomb might be defused.

Yet, what Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi fails to grasp is that there was never any real danger of Israel capitalizing on the moment. Israel’s leadership lacks the vision or willpower to exploit the historical opportunity to reshape Gaza’s demographic and geographic reality.

The theory we have presented at the Yachin Center, which emphasizes Egypt’s long-term interest in arming and strengthening Gaza for the purposes of exhausting Israel, suppressing domestic opposition, and maintaining indirect leverage over Israeli politics through repeated escalations, has now been confirmed not just as a historical observation but as a real-time political phenomenon in 2025.

As soon as the U.S. began working to neutralize the Gaza issue, it was Egypt that rushed to organize Arab states and formulate the $53 billion plan, all while doubling its military presence along the border.

These escalating military and diplomatic maneuvers confirm that the "Time Bomb Theory" is not merely a retrospective analysis—it is an ongoing, predictive model of Middle Eastern power dynamics.

Since 1994, Israel has refused to expose Egypt’s role as a state sponsor of terror to the United States. This deliberate blindness has allowed Egypt to position itself as a legitimate U.S. partner while simultaneously entrenching itself in the future of Gaza—much like how Hamas was legitimized as a political actor over time.

Instead of leveraging Egypt’s current diplomatic vulnerability due to economic and U.S. pressures, Israel is inexplicably allowing Egypt to emerge stronger, to restore its demographic-military time bomb, and to present itself to the Trump administration as an indispensable regional player.

While Israel’s military deterrence against Egypt remains somewhat intact, its diplomatic paralysis is astounding. It is no mystery why Egypt is acting in its own interests—but why is Israel failing to act in its own? Why is Prime Minister Netanyahu standing idly by as Egypt maneuvers to protect its strategic asset? This is not Egypt’s fault. Cairo has pursued the same policy since 1948. The real failure lies with Israel, which, since 1994, has refused to acknowledge or confront the reality it faces.

If Israel’s leadership does not expose Egypt’s role in perpetuating Gaza’s instability, if it does not counterbalance Egypt’s efforts to arm and entrench its influence, then it is just as complicit in the perpetuation of this conflict as those who facilitated Hamas’ rise to power.

Egypt cannot be allowed to be part of determining the future of the Gaza Strip. Like Hamas, which it has used as its proxy, it is part of the problem, not the solution.

The statements were made today, March 18, 2025, from the Knesset at a conference discussing the changing security reality along the Israel-Egypt border.