The road to a Free Palestine goes through Cairo

For many Egyptian revolutionaries, one truth remains undeniable: the liberation of Palestine is inseparable from the liberation of Egypt. Egypt’s cultural and political influenceand strategic location has made it a prime target for Western imperialism, which props up the military dictatorship to safeguard its capitalist interests in the region. Far from a passive bystander, the Egyptian regime is an active accomplice in the genocide in Gaza and the broader occupation of Palestine. It collaborates with Western powers, accepting aid and arms deals while tightening prison doors on its own people and the border onGaza.

 

It is necessary for the maintenance of Western imperial interests in the region that the military regime continues to maintain a strong hold over the people. A revolt against the Egyptian regime would shatter the foundations of both the occupation of Palestine and the military dictatorship in Egypt. This is why the state violently crushes any mobilization for Palestinian liberation, even as it cynically claims solidarity. The regime knows: to stand with Palestine is to stand against oppression.

 

Palestine as a Radicalizing Force 

 

For generations, the Palestinian struggle has politicized Egyptians, exposing the brutal realities of imperialism, capitalism, and colonization, realities that mirror Egypt’s own subjugation. This was evident after the 1967 Naksa, when Israel’s defeat of the Egyptian military sparked mass dissent. By 1968, student protestserupted, organized by Supporters of the Palestinian Revolution on university campuses. This movement snowballed into the 1977 Bread Uprisingagainst Anwar Sadat’s regime.

 

The same pattern repeated in the early 2000s, when solidarity with the Palestinian Intifada quickly turned into rage against Hosni Mubarak’s dictatorship. Security forces responded with brutal force, knowing that pro-Palestine protests inevitably become anti-regime protests, a fear that haunts the Egyptian state to this day.  It was this very cycle of dissentagainst normalization with Israel and U.S. imperialism that fueled the 2011 revolutionand toppled Mubarak.

 

2011: Palestine at the Heart of Revolution

 

During the 2011 uprising, Palestinian flags flew over Tahrir Square, and revolutionaries stormed the Israeli embassytwice, demanding an end to diplomatic ties. Israel watched in panic as its "peace treaty" with Egypt, a cornerstone of its regional legitimacy, faced collapse. However, with Abdel Fattah el-Sisi’s coup in 2013, the counter-revolution triumphed. Sisi not only restored the military dictatorship but deepened collaborationwith Israel, waging a so-called "war on terror" in Sinaidisplacing, detaining and massacring people. At one point, Egypt was even dubbed Israel’s "closest ally" in the region, a grotesque betrayal of the Palestinian struggle and the Egyptian people.

 

The U.S.-Backed Machine of Repression

 

Sisi’s survival depends on his alliances with the U.S. and Israel, who share his goal of crushing Palestinian resistance and its influence on Egyptian political consciousness. Since the Camp David Accords, Egypt has received an average of $1.3 billion annuallyin U.S. military aid, while European powers like France, Germany, and the UK arm the regime to the teeth. Even Canada had a deal for Canadian police officers to train the Egyptian policein 2015. The West’s commitment to propping up the regime is undeniable, funnelling endless resources into a grotesque machinery of repression, sprawling prison complexes, a dystopian new capital rising from the ruins of a collapsing economy, and a dictatorship sustained by brute force. 

 

In Sinai, in place of beautiful olive groves now stands one of many of Sisi's monstrous prisoncomplexes, echoing the same violence and tactics of the zio-american imperial machine. Under Sisi, over 60,000 political prisonerssuffer in horrific conditions, their arrests enabled by U.S. surveillancetechnology. Most recently, crackdowns have targetedEgyptians protesting the genocide in Gaza, proof that Palestine continues to ignite the flames of revolt. 

 

The Persistence of Resistance 

 

In October 2023, spontaneous protests erupted across Egyptin solidarity with Gaza. Sisi, fearing their revolutionary potential, attempted to co-opt the outrage, calling for state-sanctioned rallies against Palestinian displacement. In defiance masses flooded Tahrir and January 2011's chants echo throughout the square once againa decade later, defying state organized chants and tearing down Sisi’s posters. The regime responded with violence, arresting over 100people, including children.

 

A rise against the military state is imperative and there is mobilization happening in a way we have not seen in a long time. There is a return of a students for Palestine movementon campuses, where students have been organizing protests, strikes and social media campaigns for Palestinian liberation. In October 2023 we hear for the first time the voices of students, from the American University of Cairo (AUC) Egypt to Al Azhar University, flood the city. The children of the revolutionwho grew up bearing witness to the horrors of their family, teachers and loved ones arrested, exiled, killed or forcefully disappeared under the military regime were rising in dissent against the genocide in Gaza. The regime did everything it could to quiet a defeated generation, unmoved by the system's atrocities, but the Palestinian resistance managed, yet again, to mobilize the fire in another generation to take to the streets after almost a decade of silence. This of course did not come without anxiety and fear, this moment held a lot of significance to this generation and the regime, one of the students protesting wrote in a substack that her friend expressed, being scared "because of the magnitude of this as someone who grew up in a period where taking a stance in the streets meant (and means) suicide."

 

On October 18th, The protests eventually flooded over beyond the walls of university campuses as chants for a free Palestine and an end to the treacherous Egyptian regime pierced through the forced silence of Egyptian streets from the Egyptian Journalists Syndicate in Cairo, Sutar Street in Alexandria to Al Husary Square in Giza. On October 20th, 2023the people break the biggest barrier of all, Tahrir is flooded again almost a decade later. It was occupied for under an hour before the state violently dispersed the protest and arrested many, but it brought the revolution back to life for a moment. Students, activists, lawyers and everyone raging at the slaughtering of their kin a few hundred kilometers away rushed to the cradle of revolution, Tahrir square.  

 

The state tightened its security on Tahrir and surrounding streets doing everything it could to ensure the people's voices are never raised again in these streets. However, that has not stopped the people. The Journalist Syndicate steps became another cradle that continues to carry the weight of Egyptian rage and a contained revolution waiting to erupt. People have been taking to the steps calling for the end of the occupation of Palestine and the release of their fellow comrades who have been arrested by the regime throughout the past year and half for standing in solidarity with Palestine. 

 

The protests continue to this day. The most recent protestwas April 8th, 2025. This persistence is incredibly important, in an extremely repressed climate where thousands have been arrested and silenced. The people are exercising their revolutionary muscles once again, and the crowd is only growing. The new generation feels empowered and are encouraging their friends to join refusing to allow the state to terrorize them into silence. The resistance succeeds in politicizing yet another generation of Egyptian youth. Students across Egypt organized together creating a movement called Egyptian Students for Palestine connecting students across Egypt with the student Intifada in the West, embodying what it is to truly globalize the intifada. 

 

Workers revolt

 

Palestinian solidarity protests spread the contagious energy of revolt across the country, empowering Egyptian workers to strike against oppressive and greedy employers. Thousands of women textile workers of Al Mahalathe largest textile factory in Mahala al-Kubra, whose strikes lead to the Egyptian revolution in 2011 were striking again for fair wages in February of 2024. Men joined the strike from the weaving and spinning sheds, occupying the factory square. Al Mahala workers were once again paving the way for a return of labour strikes. Many labour strikeshave erupted across private and public industries in Egypt since. This is exactly the environment of growing rage towards the greed and violence of the ruling class, as well as, the regime's active hand in the occupation of Palestine that births revolution. A similar series of events are what previously lead to the explosion of the Egyptian revolution and the Arab Springacross the region just over a decade ago. 

 

The Palestinian resistance continues to raise generations of revolutionary Egyptians who carry on the struggle against both the military and Israeli occupation. As long as the occupation exists the people will continue to resist. A revolution is simmering beneath the surface of the regime's skin and it is the Palestinian resistance that brought it to the surface. Our people continue to build over and over towards their liberation because our dreams for free movement from Aswan to Safad, dignity and life for our people are shared just as deeply as our struggles are. As the phenomenal Alaa Abdel Fattah, an Egyptian writer, political prisoner and revolutionary wrote:

 

"Do I have the right to dream of escaping to Gaza? Do I have the right to dream of a road to Cairo that passes through Gaza? Does a captive have the right to ask for help from the besieged? I know these questions show how ancient I am, but I’m an Arab and Palestine’s always on my mind."

- Palestine On My Mind, Alaa Abdel Fattah

 

Our liberation is intertwined. To free Palestine from zionist occupation is to free Egypt from military occupation. The borders and walls of the occupation will fall.