A whole year has passed since the beginning of the Israeli aggression that has assumed genocidal proportions against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, an aggression that has spread to the West Bank and, more recently, Lebanon. More than 42,000 people have died and 10,000 are missing. Meanwhile, no more than a five-hour drive from the Gaza border, Cairo and other cities in Egypt have been a site of suppression of any attempt by Egyptians to show solidarity with the Palestinian and the Lebanese people trapped under incessant Israeli bombardment.

In the year since the start of the aggression, at least 150 people have been arrested and questioned by the Supreme State Security Prosecution after peacefully expressing their stance against the Israeli occupation's genocidal war on Palestinians. The solidarity activists all face charges under the Anti-Terrorism Law, while a number of them face charges under the Assembly Law No. 10 of 1914, a colonial-era law that was not repealed by Law No. 107 of 2013 ( regulating all forms of peaceful gatherings and demonstrations). This is in contrast with other legislation related to protest that was repealed by the promulgation of the new 2013 law.

EIPR has documented that at least 150 people have been charged with terrorism-related offenses in 12 state security cases, several of whom were represented by EIPR lawyers during questioning. Of the 150, 108 remain in open-ended pretrial detention, including at least two children and a young man in his late twenties with a disability. It should be noted that 41 of these detainees were detained around the beginning of the war and are about to complete a full year of imprisonment for their support for Palestine, and decisions to renew their pre-trial detention continue to be issued despite the absence of any legal justification for keeping them in remand detention. On the other hand, EIPR has monitored the arrests of a number of other citizens in addition to the 150 mentioned above, who were released without investigation.  

The Egyptian authorities do not respect the constitutional right to the peaceful expression of political opinion. In fact, they have succeeded in effectively criminalizing all forms of demonstrations, even if they comply with all the strict procedures and conditions of the Protest Law issued by the authorities in November 2013. Over the past year, the authorities have thwarted any form of solidarity, no matter how limited or symbolic, threatened and prosecuted anyone who declares solidarity with the Palestinian people, denounces Israeli crimes, or opposes Egypt's official response to the war. In order to do this, the state has criminalized acts that do not qualify as criminal even by the very law bar of the highly restrictive assembly and demonstration laws.

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