TEHRAN - Public sentiments against Israel have been growing among Egyptian people since the Tel Aviv regime launched war on the Gaza Strip on October 7.

The recent deaths of two Egyptian soldiers at the hands of Israeli troops have fueled considerable resentment against the Zionist regime. 

Abdallah Ramadan was killed in an exchange of fire between Egyptian and Israeli forces near the Rafah Border Crossing in the southern Gaza Strip on Monday.  

Ibrahim Islam Abdelrazzaq, the other soldier, later succumbed to the injuries he sustained in the gun battle.  

Their funerals were held last week as people expressed outrage over their killings by Israeli forces. 

Their deaths also sparked anger on social media platforms, the only window for freedom of speech in the Arab country. Many social media users called the soldiers martyrs and heroes who have sacrificed their lives to defend the country. 

They blamed the Egyptian army for not organizing full military funerals for the slain soldiers.  

This came amid heightened tensions between Cairo and Tel Aviv after the Israeli army took control of the Gazan side of the Rafah Crossing on May 7 following a ground assault on the city. 

More than half of Gaza’s 2.3 population had been crammed into Rafah before Israel carried out an incursion into the city and took control of a buffer zone along the border between the strip and Egypt.

According to the UN, over one million people have fled Gaza since Israel’s assault on the city nearly a month ago. 

Egypt has already issued a stern warning to Israel over the Rafah offensive amid reports that the regime seeks to forcibly transfer Gaza’s population to the Sinai Peninsula. 

The recent gun battle incident has  plunged relations between Egypt and Israel to a new low. According to the Wall Street Journal, Egypt told Israel it will not hesitate to respond militarily if it feels its security has been threatened.

Egypt says the Israeli military presence in the Gaza buffer zone appears to violate the Camp David Accords of 1978, the US-brokered agreements that led to a peace treaty between Cairo and Tel Aviv a year later. 

Following Israel’s incursion into Rafah, reports suggested that Egypt had threatened to suspend the treaty if the Rafah offensive continued. 

Egypt has also announced it will formally join the case filed by South Africa against Israel at the International Court of Justice, which accuses the regime of genocide in the Gaza Strip. 

Israel says its offensive in Rafah, which has sparked global condemnation, is in line with its efforts to achieve “total victory” over Hamas and “destroy” the resistance group. 

This dream has remained elusive in the face of growing support for the Palestinian resistance. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has also been accused of seeking to prolong the war for his political purposes.  

In the meantime, the gun battle between the Israeli and Egyptian forces clearly indicates that the Netanyahu regime does not scruple to violate the accords, that Tel Aviv signed with Cairo 45 years ago, for its military and political goals. 

Israel has also signed normalization deals with some Arab states over the recent past years. Palestinians have called these agreements a stab in the back of the Palestinian people and their cause. 

People in Egypt and other Arab countries that have normalized ties with Israel regard Israel as their number one enemy. 

Such resentment and Israel’s warmongering attitude toward Egyptian forces should serve as a red flag for states seeking to build relationships with the regime. 

Israel is an apartheid regime that has butchered more than 36,000 Palestinians in the nearly eight-month-old war on Gaza. Normalization deals cannot change the savage nature of Israel. As the saying goes, a leopard cannot change its spots!