It was an unusual scene for a national homecoming. As thousands of Egyptians gathered outside El Alamein International Airport last Friday to celebrate their soccer team’s historic FIFA World Cup run, the flags that greeted the players were not just Egyptian but also Palestinian.
For miles across the Mediterranean coastal city, fans held up banners bearing coach Hossam Hassan’s image draped in both countries’ flags. Standing on the open-top bus carrying the players through the city, Hassan himself waved a large Palestinian flag back at the cheering crowds lining the route.
Despite exiting the tournament in the Round of 16, Egypt returned home celebrated as much for Hassan’s outspoken support for Palestine as for the team’s deepest-ever World Cup run. During the preceding weeks, the coach had revived a public solidarity that once made Egypt the Arab world’s leading popular voice for Palestine — and which was steadily extinguished following the crackdown that accompanied Abdel Fattah El-Sisi’s rise to power after the 2013 military takeover.
One fan who travelled several hours from Cairo to greet the team in El Alamein was Islam Al-Sayed. He told +972 Magazine that he joined the crowd not just to celebrate a remarkable World Cup run, but also to celebrate a man who had stated clearly, on the world’s biggest sporting stage, what millions of Egyptians feel but cannot safely say in public.
“Hossam Hassan was speaking from a position of strength,” Al-Sayed explained. “He had proven himself as a good coach. And from that position, as someone who had earned the right to be heard, he spoke about Palestine.”
The defining moment came after Egypt’s historic penalty-shootout victory over Australia on July 3 — the country’s first-ever World Cup knockout win. Hassan walked the length of the pitch carrying a Palestinian flag as Egypt’s supporters in the stadium chanted “Free Palestine.” He dedicated the victory to the Egyptian and Palestinian people, adding, “My heart and soul are with them. May God have mercy on their martyrs.”
Days later, ahead of the team’s clash with Argentina, Hassan devoted more than four minutes of his pre-match press conference to Palestinian suffering. “If there is anyone in the world who does not feel for the Palestinian people,” he said, “then they are not human — whether they are Arab, European, or American.”
Egypt’s run ended on July 7 in dramatic fashion. After leading Argentina for most of the match, Egypt conceded three goals in the final 13 minutes to lose 3-2. A VAR decision ruled out what had appeared to most viewers to be a legitimate Egyptian goal, while two penalty appeals — including one involving captain Mohamed Salah moments before Argentina’s stoppage-time winner — were dismissed.
As an infuriated Hassan walked toward the tunnel after the final whistle, an Argentine-Israeli fan — who later reportedly admitted on Israeli television that he had deliberately sought to provoke the coach because of his views — rushed toward the tunnel entrance waiving an Israeli flag. Hassan appeared to spit in the direction of the flag and had to be restrained by security.
Israeli media jumped on the incident, projecting Hassan’s reaction to the loss as frantic and derogatory. But it did not appear to harm his reputation with the Egyptian Football Association, which renewed Hassan’s contract through 2030 within 24 hours after Egypt’s exit from the tournament.
The association also filed a formal complaint over the refereeing of the match, alleging bias. FIFA’s chief refereeing officer, Pierluigi Collina, rejected the accusation, insisting that “nobody can question the integrity of FIFA World Cup match officials” and that “unfounded allegations have no place in our sport.”
Yet for many in Egypt and across the Arab world, the match had already acquired a political significance that transcended soccer: a battle between an Egyptian team that had unexpectedly become a vehicle for expressing a solidarity difficult to voice at home, and an Argentinian team whose openly pro-Israel government under President Milei did not go unnoticed.
‘A historical weight’
Upon his return to Egypt, when asked on a talk show about his repeated gestures of solidarity, Hassan said they had not been planned. “We were delivering a message on behalf of people we care about, to those who are in charge, from the heart of the United States,” he told a cheering audience. He added that Palestinians in Gaza had been watching the Egyptian team from screens set up amid the ruins.
For Jordanian political scientist Dr. Khaled Sheneikat, Hassan’s reception across the Arab world exposed a paradox that has defined Egypt’s relationship with Palestine for over a decade: Popular solidarity has endured even as public expressions of it have been steadily repressed.
The Egyptian-Palestinian bond “carries historical weight that no other Arab country shares in quite the same way, by virtue of [Egypt’s] participation in the wars of 1948, 1967, and 1973, and the burdens Egypt has borne in relation to the conflict,” he argued. “This explains the scale of popular engagement with Gaza.”
Hassan’s World Cup journey revealed Egypt’s (and much of the world’s) enduring sympathy for Palestine, but it also exposed the narrow boundaries within which such sympathy may be expressed. While the national team’s coach could wave a Palestinian flag before 80,000 spectators and be rewarded with a contract extension, ordinary Egyptians have faced arrest for doing the same.
At a local league game in June 2024, more than 200 Al Ahly Sporting Club fans were detained at Alexandria’s Army Stadium after raising Palestinian flags and chanting pro-Palestine slogans. They were taken to National Security Agency headquarters and police stations before eventually being released.
This crackdown has extended far beyond soccer fans. According to Amnesty International, Egyptian authorities detained at least 123 people between October 2023 and May 2024 for expressing solidarity with Gaza, whether through protests, social media posts, or writing slogans on walls. Many faced charges including involvement in terrorism, spreading false news, and participation in illegal assemblies.
The following year, when more than 4,000 activists from over 80 countries converged on the Egyptian capital hoping to march toward the Rafah crossing as part of the Global March to Gaza, Egyptian authorities blocked them. Around 400 foreign participants were deported, while Egyptian organizers were slapped with terrorism charges.
A separate Egyptian flotilla initiative, the “Flotilla of Steadfastness,” never even reached the water: Three members of its organizing committee were arrested before departure, while security forces surrounded its Cairo headquarters.
‘The Palestinian cause should not require permission’
Viewed against this repressive climate, the decision to welcome the national team not in Cairo but 162 miles away in El Alamein is significant. As Egyptian fans processed what many of them regarded as an unjust end to their tournament run, they learned just hours before the team’s arrival that their homecoming would be held in the seaside resort city rather than the capital — a decision that irked many.
Dr. Heba El-Beshbeshy, a political scientist at Cairo University, read the choice as being driven in part by economic calculations. “El Alamein is being marketed as a resort city,” she said of the “new state-of-the-art tourist destination” associated with Egypt’s vacationing elite and government officials. “Hosting the team there served as promotional publicity for it.”
But the political dimension, she argued, was just as important. “Receiving the team at Cairo airport would have been a significant security risk. El Alamein allowed for greater control.”
Shady El-Adl, head of the newly-established Egyptian Liberal Party, saw the decision as part of a broader governing philosophy. “The Egyptian government pursues a policy of removing citizens from public life and tightly controlling mass participation,” he told +972. “The state ‘engineers’ public space so that it becomes the sole organizer of any popular movement.”
He pointed to the state-sanctioned demonstrations held near the Rafah Crossing over the past several years as an example, where protesters were at times reportedly bused in by Sisi-aligned parties. Access to Rafah is tightly controlled, with the roads from Cairo and elsewhere subject to extensive security checkpoints, making it virtually impossible for thousands of people to reach the border without state approval.
“Media coverage of these activities was limited to outlets and figures close to the government,” said El-Adl, who explained that the demonstrations themselves were intended to project support for the state’s official position on Palestine. For him, the reception in El Alamein followed the same script. “It’s a managed celebration, held in a city that does not represent ordinary Egyptians.”
Human rights activist Yasser Saad sees the same underlying pattern. “Egyptian authorities view popular solidarity with Palestine as an extremely sensitive matter,” he said. In his view, the state seeks to project its official support for the Palestinian cause while containing any independent popular movement that might escape its control.
He pointed to the pro-Palestine demonstrations of Oct. 20, 2023, which began as officially sanctioned solidarity rallies before groups emerging from Al-Azhar Mosque began using chants from the Arab Spring, criticizing domestic conditions by calling for bread, freedom, and dignity — at which point the authorities’ tolerance ended almost immediately.
The same has been true during the World Cup. The state that had arrested soccer supporters, blocked marches to Rafah and tightly managed public expressions of solidarity with Gaza had no objection to Hassan’s repeated gestures on the world’s biggest sporting stage; the Egyptian Football Association even rewarded him with a new contract.
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Not all Egyptians were comfortable with how Hassan reacted to the team’s loss, and in particular his confrontation with the Argentine-Israeli fan. Khaled Montasser, a prominent liberal author and television presenter, posted on Facebook after the match saying it was a mistake to spit toward opposing fans — “and I say opposing, not enemy. This is objectionable and unacceptable behavior.”
He pushed back on the justification that the Israeli flag warranted the response: “You raised a flag on the pitch and they raised a flag in the stands — that’s where it ends. Let’s not turn it into political provocation and spitting, which could escalate amid fraying nerves into obscene gestures.”
For El-Adl, however, the debate misses the point. “We now have a ruling class and those who benefit from proximity to it on one side, and the rest of society on the other,” he said. “Moving events to El Alamein is a continuation of isolating people. The Palestinian cause is not a matter that should require permission.”
