How Middle East authoritarians benefit from Gaza conflict

Over the weekend, after a significant exchange of missiles between Israel and the Hezbollah group, Egyptian leader Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi spoke to a top US general, warning of the danger of any further escalation of the Gaza conflict.

The international community needs to "exert all efforts and intensify pressures to defuse tension and stop the state of escalation that threatens the security and stability of the entire region," el-Sissi said, according to a statement published by his office after a visit from the US General Charles Quinton Brown a few hours after the Israeli military and the armed wing of Hezbollah, based in Lebanon, traded fire. 

Alongside Americans and Qataris, Egyptians are part of the team of mediators trying to negotiate a cease-fire in Gaza, where an Israeli military campaign has been ongoing since the October 7 attacks by the Gaza-based Hamas militant group. 

Such statesmanlike words help el-Sissi polish his image, says Hossam el-Hamalawy, an Egyptian researcher and activist now living in Germany who writes a regular newsletter on Egyptian politics. "And the war in Gaza basically has helped consolidate his regime even further," el-Hamalawy told DW.

During almost 11 months of the Gaza conflict, the idea that Egypt — the Middle East's most populous country, with around 111 million people — is "too big to fail" has become more compelling.

Fighting has meant important income earners for Egypt, like tourism and shipping through the Suez Canal, have been throttled. This has worsened a crippling economic crisis in Egypt widely considered to be the result of years of financial mismanagement by el-Sissi.

"So the Europeans, Americans, the International Monetary Fund and other international powers are basically all rushing to bail [Egypt] out," el-Hamalawy argues, referring to various recent loans and investment deals worth over $50 billion that have helped prevent the collapse of the Egyptian pound.

"Sissi goes to the West and says that 'I'm fighting terrorism, I'm essential for regional stability.' But at the same time he's cracking down on internal dissent," el-Hamalawy continues. "He's simply a hypocrite. Among those arrested recently was Ashraf Omar, a cartoonist, and because of his cartoons, he's now being held on terror charges — as are most of the other Egyptian journalists and media workers behind bars."

El-Sissi "seems to be hoping that popular anger will be focused on Israel and, to a lesser extent, the US for backing its actions in Gaza," agreed researchers from UK-based think-tank, Chatham House, in a recent article.

How to profit in a crisis

Egypt's authoritarian ruler is not the only leader in the region hoping for this.

Over the last two years, governments in Algeria, Tunisia, Libya and Morocco "have deftly managed to tap the veins of several global crises — including wars, migration and rising populism in Europe — to revive their faltering rule," Alia Brahimi and Karim Mezran, both senior fellows at the Atlantic Council think tank, wrote in a July post for the organization.

The researchers mostly looked at the impacts of the war in Ukraine and the rise of far-right parties in Europe that have prioritized migration policies over human rights by funding governments who say they can police migration. But the Gaza conflict has also had an effect.

It has allowed Algeria to use its temporary seat on the United Nations Security Council, to "showcase its Arab nationalist credentials, as well as its historic and principled anti-colonial position," Brahimi and Mezran said. At the same time, penalties against Algerian pro-democracy activists are getting tougher and human rights organizations are being banned in the country, they added.

Gaza as a "distraction"

In Tunisia, activists say their increasingly authoritarian head of state, Kais Saied, has been using a pro-Palestinian stance to "distract" locals from the country's economic crisis and a crackdown on the Tunisian opposition.

Gaza is a constant in the president's speeches and on social media, Tunisian writer Tharwa Boulifi stated in a March op-ed for The New Arab. "Since October, activists protesting for the release of political prisoners have become irrelevant to local media, which predominantly focuses on pro-Palestine protests," she recounted.

A draft law, presented last October, that could potentially see civil society and non-governmental organizations in Tunisia suspended as "foreign agents," is also being sold by politicians as a reaction to the Gaza conflict. The law explicitly forbids any Tunisian body from a relationship with the Israeli state. But at the same time, activists point out, it establishes conditions where the Tunisian government could shut down human rights organizations by simply accessing foreign funding.

Difficult balancing act

Despite the gains some authoritarians may have seen as a result of the Gaza conflict, it is also often pointed out the issue can be a double-edged sword. The Palestinian cause is close to the hearts of the majority of the Middle East's ordinary citizens, even if they don't live in democracies.

For some countries, this is now resulting in a difficult balancing act. There have been plenty of accusations from citizens that, despite paying lip service to the Palestinian cause, most Arab leaders have not done enough to bring about a cease-fire.

Marc Lynch, a professor of political science and international affairs at George Washington University, doesn't believe things can go on this way.

Arab leaders "are among the world's most experienced practitioners of realpolitik, and they have a record of ignoring their people's preferences," he wrote in Foreign Affairs magazine in April. "They often dress up even the most nakedly cynical and self-interested moves as serving the interests of Palestinians or defending Arab honor."

But they may soon find that drawbacks of conflict in Gaza outweigh any advantages, Lynch argues. 

"Staying in power … means not only preventing obviously regime-threatening mass protests but also being attentive to potential sources of discontent," Lynch wrote. "With almost every Arab country outside the Gulf suffering extreme economic problems, and accordingly exercising maximum repression, regimes have to be even more careful in responding to issues such as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict."