Egypt is following in the footsteps of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain with respect to relations with Qatar and is reopening its air space to flights from the Gulf country. This is the staging of the end of the boycott the four countries applied to the Qatari state, after considering that it supported terrorism and the organisation of the Muslim Brothers.
The reopening of air space involves not only re-establishing direct flights between the two countries but also the possibility of Qatari planes crossing Egyptian air space and the exchange of goods, which had also been paralysed since 2017.
Following the latest summit of the Gulf Cooperation Council, a group in which Egypt is not present but which usually participates as a guest like other countries, the Al-Ula declaration was signed, whereby the four countries that had kept Qatar in a blockade situation agreed to cease to exist and reopen their borders after three years of isolation.
Both Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates had previously announced the reopening, even before the declaration was signed at the end of the 41st GCC summit, and some of their airports have already received flights from the Qatari airline.
In the case of Egypt, President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi's relationship with the Muslim Brothers is even more hostile than in the other Gulf countries. Indeed, the Egyptian leader himself was responsible for staging a coup d'état to depose the then Egyptian president, Mohammed Morsi, who had won the elections with his Freedom and Justice party. The close ties between Morsi and his party with the Muslim Brothers caused concern among the military, which ended up leading Al-Sisi to lead the uprising.
In this context, the dynamics of the region made sense. In the Gulf, Cairo positioned itself alongside Riyadh, Abu Dhabi and Manama vis-à-vis Doha, which is supported by Ankara and Teheran. In Libya, Egypt sides with the Haftar National Liberation Army against the National Accord Government, which is supported by the Erdogan regime. Egypt, in turn, sides with Greece in its claim to the waters of the eastern Mediterranean in the face of interference from the Eurasian country, which is also linked to the Muslim Brotherhood.
In the case of Qatar, the situation has finally come to an end, but it is only one of many more or less active regional conflicts, diplomatic or military, in the Middle East region.
