Voices from Egypt weigh in on the Israel-Hamas war

In Egypt, people who might look to the West for support or back the idea of peace in the region are in a tough position as death tolls in Gaza rise and the U.S. supports Israel.

SCOTT DETROW, HOST:

Israel’s war against Hamas is closely felt in Egypt, which shares a border with both Israel and the Gaza Strip. The support that Israel is getting from the U.S. as death tolls rise in Gaza has impacted views of the U.S. and the prospects of building peace in the region. NPR’s Aya Batrawy was in Cairo and has this report.

AYA BATRAWY, BYLINE: Noha Bakr has lived through wars between Egypt and Israel in the 1960s and ’70s. She’s also seen what it takes to build peace. As a political science professor in Cairo, she teaches young Egyptians about a speech in 1977 by Egyptian President Anwar Sadat in which he told Israel’s Knesset that Arab and Israeli lives are of equal value. That speech helped lay the groundwork for Egypt and Israel’s peace treaty two years later in 1979.

NOHA BAKR: Every time I teach Egyptian foreign policy, I used to make my students listen to it and make content analysis because this is how you build peace. This is how you build confidence. I come from a generation that we were talking about regional peace.

BATRAWY: But Bakr says that goodwill is being undone now by Israel’s war on Gaza, a war that’s displaced more than 1.7 million Palestinians from their homes and killed thousands of people, most of them women and children according to health officials in Gaza.

BAKR: What’s happening now has eradicated all our efforts, me and others, working on peace-building and conflict resolution. We’re going back. We’re going back on all this. It took years to be able to build confidence. It took years for us to see that we can live together.

BATRAWY: Egypt and Israel’s ties are a cornerstone of stability for both countries, but the war is straining relations. Israel says the war is in response to the October 7 attacks…