US faces ‘critical questions’ over Egypt Gaza agreement after withdrawing from war | Conflicts between Israel and Palestine Issues

US President Joe Biden is reviewing US-Egypt relations – as well as his pledge to fight against human rights abuses by the government of President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi – in 11 days deadly violence on the Gaza Strip.

Washington this month relied heavily on Egyptian diplomats, who travel between Tel Aviv and Gaza to meet to end war between Israel and the Palestinian group Hamas, which controls the surrounding Palestinian territories.

In doing so, Biden’s officials faced questions about their pledge to take the “human rights” approach to Egypt, which has been involved in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as one of the participating countries, Israel and Hamas.

The US president had already done so He said there will be no more “empty checks” by el-Sisi, who called his successor Donald Trump a “dictator”, but some human rights activists said Biden had already failed to commit to that.

“Once again, we see that nothing has changed,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, executive director of Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN), think tank in Washington, DC.

“[Antony] “Blinken never met a single person in Cairo,” said a United States secretary of state. go to the capital of Egypt last week in support of a ceasefire.

“He has never said more about human rights than [former Secretary of State Mike] Pompeo and Trump’s supervisors ahead of him. “

‘Covenant agreement’

In two calls between Biden and el-Sisi this month – the first since Biden took office in January – the US president “thanked Egypt for its success”, according to a White House reader. “President Biden emphasized the importance of dialogue for the protection of human rights in Egypt,” he said.

On Wednesday in Cairo, Blinken reaffirmed the US agreement with Egypt.

He told reporters that he had “long talks with the exchange of human rights” with the Egyptian leader, who took office in 2013. army which seized President Mohamed Morsi. El-Sisi was very recent re-elected in 2018, ran unopposed after his opponent and many of his constituents ceased to be intimidated.

Seth Binder, a spokesman for the Project on Middle East Democracy (POMED), said Biden’s management ‘words “misunderstood” the issue and sent the wrong message to Cairo.

An important meeting with the President of Egypt Sisi today. I paid tribute to President Biden for his efforts in Egypt to support the ceasefire and to strengthen the existing alliance between the United States and Egypt. pic.twitter.com/NzW83ivpAC

– Secretary Antony Blinken (@SecBlinken) May 26, 2021

“The Egyptians are doing this for their own sake,” he told Al Jazeera. “We should not lean on our own strength to try to thank them for what they are doing.

“We can continue to work with them to stop the war, as well as pressure them and continue to establish the right to freedom of expression.”

The ‘Benefit’ of El-Sisi

For el-Sisi, the middle ground in Gaza has become “Manna from heaven”, says Michele Dunne, director and senior fellow of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace’s Middle East.

This heightened the need for the Egyptian leader as Biden’s management sought to establish foreign policy in other parts of the Middle East and the world, allowing el-Sisi to “show his work”, Dunne told Al Jazeera.

He said the Egyptian president was currently receiving political benefits as a mediator with Hamas, compared to 2014 Gaza war, how Hamas treats the Muslim Brotherhood and supports Israel’s persecution.

“I believe that Sisi hopes that her role in the fight against Hamas and perhaps her role in helping the people of Gaza give her the opportunity to pursue human rights and other issues in the US-Egypt relationship,” Dunne said.

The most recent alliance comes when El-Sisi challenged not only the role claimed by Biden officials, but also U.S. lawmakers who are heavily critical of US military assistance in Egypt, worth $ 1.3bn a year.

Forced on Biden

In recent years, Congress has enacted legislation requiring the State Department to ensure that Egypt acts in compliance with human rights standards before the money is released.

Last year, Congress approved a $ 75 million grant to help Cairo free political prisoners and meet other human rights standards – and it does not have the potential to authorize the State Department.

Some in the US also questioned the growing importance of Egypt, which once seemed to be justified by the power in Cairo in the Arab world, directing the Suez Canal – a trade route linking the Mediterranean with the Red Sea – and its border with the Gaza Strip.

However, Biden’s administration has indicated that it will not continue to reform, to the detriment of human rights activists and other lawmakers. selling for $ 197m of arrows and other weapons related to Egypt in February.

This comes less than a month before the annual report of the Ministry of Culture on a series of clean-ups in Egypt, including unjust killings, torture, forced disappearances, attacks on journalists and political opponents, and LGBTQ violence.

The El-Sisi government has overseen the arrest of many human rights activists, journalists, and other so-called dissidents – and about 60,000 Egyptians are still in prison.

Egypt’s US freedom fighters also recently prosecution Egyptian government shutting down its brothers in Egypt as a way of forcing them to remain silent – a crime that el-Sisi has denied, but which freedom fighters have warned them.

“The misunderstandings that have arisen here have raised serious questions and ethical issues that Biden’s management do not want to address,” Dunne told Al Jazeera. “And they are facing very difficult decisions.”