Sisi warns of a conspiracy and specifies that he is not asking to be defended personally
The president ruled out constitutional change, denounced “psychological warfare” and denied hidden ambitions in Sinai — in the same 48 hours that Benjamin Netanyahu confirmed on Israeli television that Egypt’s then intelligence chief landed in Israel 11 days before 7 October 2023.
Speaking at a commemorative symposium for the October War, Abdel Fattah al-Sisi made three linked moves reported on 14 October: the agreed-upon constitution “will not be touched,” a warning against disinformation and attempts to manipulate public awareness and destabilise the state, and a denial that Egypt holds designs on Israel or hidden ambitions in Sinai, made, per the reporting, following unspecified recent remarks. Daily News Egypt rendered his appeal as a call on citizens to “fortify your country against this conspiracy.. and I do not say fortify the president.” The same account has Sisi referring to remarks at the event by Ahmed Aboul Gheit drawing a parallel between 1973 and 2013. Youm7’s front page summarised it as: look after Egypt, and the constitution will not be touched. Every outlet carrying the speech is Egyptian and state-aligned or state-adjacent; no wire version and no presidency transcript for this year’s symposium surfaced.
The second strand is being litigated abroad. In an interview broadcast Tuesday evening on Israel’s Channel 14 programme “The Patriots” — a network openly supportive of Netanyahu — the Israeli prime minister confirmed that Egypt’s then intelligence chief Abbas Kamel landed in Israel 11 days before the 7 October 2023 attack, while denying he met him and saying he did not know who received the warning. “I want to know who he met with,” Haaretz quotes him saying. Israel Hayom notes his claim that heads of state never meet intelligence directors is contradicted by video of his own past meetings. The underlying warning reports rest on thinner ground: The Atlantic’s 26 September account, a Wall Street Journal report sourced to officials in an Arab government, and an NPR story citing one senior Egyptian official. Egypt officially denied on 11 October 2023 that it had warned Israel, and has not publicly retracted that denial.
Assessment: Cairo’s silence is the Egyptian story here, and it is a position, not an absence. Netanyahu’s confirmation is being deployed inside an Israeli election to argue that a security establishment, not the prime minister, mishandled the warning; Egypt gains nothing by entering that argument and would have to unwind its own 2023 denial to do so. Note the sequencing without asserting causation: the brief does not establish whom Sisi was answering on Sinai, and the honest position is that the antecedent is unconfirmed. Treat the “psychological warfare” framing as a stated act of Egyptian information management, with no named target.