Egypt is pushing back on the U.S. view of the Gaza conflict by demanding that there be a truce to allow the shipment of humanitarian relief supplies through the Rafah crossing into the Gaza Strip. Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi reiterated his call for an immediate humanitarian truce to deliver humanitarian, medical, and relief aid to the people of Gaza, during an Oct. 29 phone call with U.S. President Joe Biden, reported the Egyptian daily Al Ahram, citing Cairo’s Foreign Ministry. The White House readout, however, mentions nothing about a truce.
At the same time, Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry was hosting U.S. Ambassador David Satterfield, the U.S. Special Envoy for Humanitarian Issues in the Middle East, in Cairo yesterday, where Shoukry called for “serious and coordinated” international action to implement an immediate humanitarian truce in Gaza. The truce, Shoukry told Satterfield, would spare civilians the “further scourge of escalation under fallacious justifications in the name of the right to self-defense or resisting terrorism,” read a statement by his Foreign Ministry, Al Ahram reported separately.
