And even before then, Egypt's peace with Israel (and Egypt's subsequent ~$1B/yr in defense aid from the US) depends on playing nice with Israel in several respects, including deferring to Israeli policy on the Gaza border.
There has been smuggling of course, but (perhaps unintentionally) Israel gives them most of what they use.
> But recent intelligence has shown the extent to which Hamas has been able to build many of its rockets and anti-tank weaponry out of the thousands of munitions that failed to detonate when Israel lobbed them into Gaza, according to weapons experts and Israeli and Western intelligence officials. Hamas is also arming its fighters with weapons stolen from Israeli military bases.
> “Unexploded ordnance is a main source of explosives for Hamas,” said Michael Cardash, the former deputy head of the Israeli National Police Bomb Disposal Division and an Israeli police consultant. “They are cutting open bombs from Israel, artillery bombs from Israel, and a lot of them are being used, of course, and repurposed for their explosives and rockets.”
Also repurposed infrastructure like water pipes and lamposts. But they had plenty of weapons and explosives pre war, before egypt sealed their border to gaza.
The explosives are the part that obviously should be given the main focus.
And quite a bit of what's being talked about wrt to re-manufacturing Israeli unexploded ordance was stockpiled prior to Oct 7th. Israel did not start bombing Gaza only after Oct 7th (and in fact had been bombing Gaza as late as Sept 23, 2023).
These articles are from over a year ago and they all say that Israel took control of the Rafah border.
"On May 7, Israeli forces seized the main border crossing at Rafah, closing a vital route for aid into the besieged enclave."
Understandably, the Egyptian government does not want to coordinate with the Israeli government after seeing how the Israeli-organized aid sites have been going.
Why did Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey, Europe, Canada etc. take Syrians during the war in Syria but Egypt (and everyone else) refuses to allow civilian Gazans to escape to safety?
> Why did Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey, Europe, Canada etc. take Syrians during the war in Syria but Egypt (and everyone else) refuses to allow civilian Gazans to escape to safety?
Spitballing here, but it might be continued unease about Arafat. He weaponised the Palestinian population in Lebanon [1] and Jordan [2] in ways that would make it politically untenable for them to accept Palestinian refugees.
