There will be no Tel Aviv’: Egyptians threaten Israel following Smotrich Sinai comments

“There will be no Tel Aviv, there will be no Ben-Gurion Airport, and there will be no Netanyahu,” said Amr Adib on MBC Egypt.

Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich speaks at the National Conservatism Conference, or NatCon, in Jerusalem on October 6, 2026 (photo credit: Yossi Zeliger, National Conservatism Conference (NATCON)

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Egyptian media channels widely aired threats against Israel, Tel Aviv, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu this week as they reacted angrily to Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich’s warning Monday that Israel would destroy Sinai if Egypt attacked Israel, delivered during an interview with the haredi (ultra-Orthodox) news site Hashtiblach.

“What will cause Egypt not to attack us? They know that if they attack, there will be no Sinai,” Smotrich told the channel. “It won’t happen again. There is no [Menachem] Begin.”

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Then-prime minister Menachem Begin made peace with Egypt by signing the historic Egypt-Israel Peace Treaty on March 26, 1979. Under the treaty, Israel agreed to withdraw its forces and civilians from the Sinai Peninsula in phases, while Egypt regained full sovereignty over the territory, and the two countries established security arrangements governing their forces in the peninsula.

An internally displaced Yemeni boy carries sticks of firewood on his head at a makeshift camp for the internally displaced who fled their homes due to renewed clashes between Yemen’s Saudi-backed government forces and the Houthi authorities in the northern Hajjah governorate on October 7, 2026.

Though his threat made clear that such an action would only be taken if Egypt attacked Israel, in the wider context of Israel’s post-October 7 security, his words were poorly received in Egypt. Egyptian parliamentarian and journalist Mustafa Bakri described the minister as an “extremist Zionist… thug” and insisted that Cairo could “crush” Israel’s military.

“[Smotrich] thinks Egypt is an open playground. I wish you would read how we crushed your army, you ignorant fool – the ones who did it once are capable of repeating it again.

“The Egyptian army is ready to confront and crush anyone whose soul dares to tamper with national security,” Bakri wrote. “You will surely be taken prisoner, and we’ll throw you in the mental hospital in Khanka. Don’t you dare overstep again, you madman [he said, addressing Smotrich].”

[Egyptian nightly talk show broadcast on the satellite channel Sada El Balad], also commented on Smotrich’s remarks, responding by insisting that “all 120 million Egyptians would die defending Egypt, and Israel would pay a heavy price if it took any step threatening Egyptian national security.”

Moussa noted Egypt’s success in the Yom Kippur War, during which more than 200 Israeli soldiers were taken prisoner by Egyptian forces, saying that this time there would be no hostages to exchange.

“If you act recklessly, there will be no Israel. You cannot get near an inch of Sinai, and what happened in 1967 will not be repeated with Egypt.”

“We are advocates of peace, but some extremists in the Zionist entity do not want peace. Egypt is a strong country. The war criminal says he will take Sinai. This is harassment and a threat to Egypt. We know what the lesson of 1973 was like for you,” Moussa said.

“You are an illegitimate state. We brought you back with the prisoner exchange, and after that there will be no prisoner exchange because there will be no prisoners.”

‘There will be no Tel Aviv, there will be no Ben-Gurion Airport’
Amr Adib, on MBC Egypt, insisted that Cairo had actively worked to defend the border with Israel from any instability, and if the IDF attacked, “There will be no Tel Aviv, there will be no Ben-Gurion Airport, and there will be no Netanyahu.”

“Before you decide to finish us, you will be finished,” he said. “Before you throw us into the sea, you will be in the sewer.”

Egyptian political science professor Hamed Fares told Sky News Arabia that Smotrich’s comments reflected a form of “political adolescence” and demonstrated, in his view, the minister’s ignorance of the region’s power dynamics.

Fares added that he believed Smotrich’s comments, which he described as a “redline” for Egypt, reflected the finance minister’s efforts to maintain a hardline image ahead of the upcoming elections.

Fares said that by portraying neighboring countries as unstable, Smotrich was seeking to create a perceived need for territorial expansion on national security grounds.

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