{"id":16655,"date":"2026-07-12T14:22:05","date_gmt":"2026-07-12T12:22:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/?p=16655"},"modified":"2026-10-24T14:55:45","modified_gmt":"2026-10-24T12:55:45","slug":"tousoun-eviction-alexandria","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/tousoun-eviction-alexandria\/","title":{"rendered":"320 Homes Face Expropriation in Alexandria\u2019s Tousoun as Demolition Begins Before the Court Rules"},"content":{"rendered":"

The crisis of the residents of the Tousoun area, part of the Montaza 2 District in eastern Alexandria, flared up again with the<\/span> start<\/span><\/a> of demolition and removal works in parts of the area, at the same time as the legal challenges filed against the decision to expropriate hundreds of homes and properties to build the new ring road continue to be examined. <\/span><\/p>\n

While the government<\/span> asserts<\/span><\/a> that the project falls within the framework of public-benefit works and the development of the road network, the residents and their lawyers who spoke to Zawia3 believe that the road’s route could have been replaced with engineering alternatives that do not require the removal of the residential block, and say that the project ultimately serves investment and tourism projects in the area east of Abu Qir.<\/span><\/p>\n

L<\/b>awyer Mohamed Ramadan Abu Bibars, the legal representative of the Tousoun residents, says that the current crisis brings back to mind what the area witnessed in 2008, when he confronted, through the courts, the decisions to demolish the residents’ homes, and managed at the time to obtain a court ruling suspending their implementation and annulling them.<\/p>\n

He tells Zawia3: “After 17 years, the scene is repeating itself once again, but this time through the expropriation decisions issued in October 2025, which covered dozens of homes and plots of land, in addition to four mosques and a church.”<\/p>\n

Abu Bibars explains that, at the residents’ request, he took on the filing of a lawsuit before the Administrative Judiciary Court challenging the expropriation decision, relying on several legal grounds, foremost among them the absence of the public-benefit condition, given that the planned project “serves a tourism and investment project and not a public facility”, as well as the existence of an already existing road that fulfils the traffic purpose, in addition to the preparation of an engineering proposal for an alternative route that does not require the removal of homes or the expropriation of residents’ properties.<\/span><\/b><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"An
An image of the road planned to be built shows that a road already exists – a document exclusive to Zawia3<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"An
An engineering proposal for an alternative route that does not require the removal of homes<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

He<\/span> points out that the court decided to appoint a three-member committee of engineering experts to examine the dispute, considering this decision a “partial victory” in this type of case, and adding that the residents are still waiting for the committee to begin its task. However, the more serious development, in his view, relates not only to the course of the lawsuit, but to what he describes as the “pressures on the ground” to which the residents are being subjected. <\/span><\/p>\n

According to his account, the Production Company for Integrated Supplies, General Contracting and Road Paving, which he says has taken the area as a temporary base for its works, began contacting the residents to buy their homes.<\/span><\/p>\n

He asserts that the company’s representatives used, according to the residents’ complaints, means of enticement and intimidation to push the residents to sell, including telling them that the file is being handled by “sovereign bodies”, and that refusing to sell would ultimately lead to the homes being evacuated by force, in addition to claiming that the company works on behalf of one of those bodies. He adds that these pressures pushed a limited number of residents to sell their units, while the majority of the residents refused to do so.<\/span><\/p>\n

Abu Bibars goes on to say that the pressures have escalated recently, citing a building containing 30 flats, of which the company bought 12 units and then began removing the walls and balconies of these units, which caused cracks in the rest of the building and disfigured its fa\u00e7ade, increasing the pressure on the residents who refuse to sell.<\/span><\/p>\n

He also accuses the company of being behind other practices, including damaging the sewage networks and cutting off the electricity supply to some buildings, noting that the residents tried to file police reports about these incidents at the Montaza 2 Police Station, but were unable to do so, according to him. <\/span><\/p>\n

Zawia3 was unable to obtain a response from the company or from the Ministry of Interior regarding these accusations by the time this report was published.<\/span><\/p>\n

Abu Bibars stresses that the defence team will continue along the legal path, pending the start of the expert committee’s work, in addition to submitting a complaint to the First Attorney General regarding the incidents attributed to the company, while at the same time calling for a reconsideration of the decision to classify the project as a public-benefit work.<\/span><\/p>\n

In the appeal memorandum submitted to the Administrative Judiciary Court against the President of the Republic, the Prime Minister, the Ministers of Local Development and of Transport, and the Governor of Alexandria, the defence relied on four main pillars.<\/p>\n

The first is the expropriation decision’s violation of the provisions of Law<\/a> No. 10 of 1990 on the expropriation of real estate for public benefit, as amended by Law No. 24 of 2018, as the defence considers that the decision was issued without completing the procedures required by the law, foremost among them the preparation of a detailed memorandum on the project and its submission to the competent permanent technical committee to verify its feasibility and its actual need for the properties to be expropriated, while giving those concerned the opportunity to express their observations.<\/p>\n

The second ground relates to the absence of public benefit, as the defence holds to the existence of an already existing road connecting the area, and to the possibility of implementing an alternative route that achieves the traffic purpose without removing homes or agricultural land, while it considers that the project in reality serves the construction of a yacht marina and a tourist zone of an investment nature, which, in its view, strips it of the description of public benefit.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"An

An excerpt from the statement of claim filed by 62 residents of Tousoun before the Administrative Judiciary Court in Alexandria, revealing that the real project is “the construction of a yacht marina and a tourist zone”, not a ring road, and that an engineering alternative is available that does not require the expropriation of citizens’ property.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"An

An excerpt from the conclusion of the statement of appeal obtained by Zawia3, containing the residents’ request to suspend, as a matter of urgency, the implementation of Prime Minister’s Decree No. 3754 of 2025 and to annul it definitively, obliging the administration to pay the costs and the necessary legal compensation.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The defence also relies on what it considers an abuse of authority, citing a similar incident that the area witnessed in 2008, when the administrative judiciary annulled removal decisions issued in preparation for allocating the land to Al-Ittihad Alexandria Club. It also cites the ruling of the Supreme Administrative Court <\/span>issued<\/span><\/a> in Appeal No. 367 of Judicial Year 30, which established that expropriation, if it is proven to target a private purpose and not the achievement of a public benefit, is a decision that violates the law.<\/span><\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the appeal memorandum warns of the social consequences of implementing the decision, considering that removing citizens’ homes and agricultural land for the benefit of a project that the residents regard as being of an investment nature may create a state of tension and a loss of trust in justice, and affect social stability. It demands that the implementation of the expropriation decision be suspended as a matter of urgency, and that the decision then be annulled, obliging the administrative authority to compensate for the damage inflicted on the residents.<\/span><\/p>\n

According to the account of a number of residents and their lawyer, the Production Company<\/a> for Integrated Supplies, General Contracting and Road Paving is carrying out the demolition and removal works linked to the project, but the company had not issued any comment on this account by the time the report was prepared.<\/p>\n

The company was founded in 2022 as a limited liability company, has its headquarters in the Sporting area of Alexandria, and works in the fields of general contracting, demolition and removal works, excavation and backfilling, road paving, and landscaping.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The company presents itself, through its<\/span> website<\/span><\/a> and its page on LinkedIn, as a provider of integrated solutions in the contracting sector, with a particular focus on demolition works using specialised equipment and occupational safety systems, and states that it possesses accumulated expertise of more than 30 years through its staff and management.<\/span><\/p>\n

The company has previously taken part in a<\/span> number<\/span><\/a> of government projects in the transport sector in Alexandria, including demolition and removal works within the Abu Qir Metro project, where it carried out the removal of a number of buildings located on the project’s route. It has also taken part in other tenders linked to infrastructure projects, according to its own data and the information published on the Government Procurement Portal.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Recommended reading:<\/b> For a Railway Project Requested by Kamel El-Wazir: The Expropriation of 87 Feddans in Sinai Puts the Residents of Al-Muqataa and Al-Kharafin Before a Third Eviction<\/b><\/a><\/p>\n


\nExpropriation: A Law in the Service of Power<\/b><\/h1>\n

For his part, lawyer Mohamed Fattouh believes that the expropriation law sets two basic conditions that may not be overlooked: that the expropriation be for the achievement of a genuine public benefit, and that the owners of the properties obtain fair compensation that is contemporaneous with the actual value of the properties at the time of implementation, and not at the time the administrative decision was issued.<\/span><\/p>\n

He tells Zawia3: “Fair compensation does not mean merely paying a sum of money, but rather that it be sufficient to enable the owner to obtain a similar alternative at the prices prevailing at the time of implementation. Compensation may not be assessed years earlier and then paid out after successive waves of inflation without being re-evaluated.”<\/span><\/p>\n

Fattouh gives the example of the Alexandria tram development project, explaining that the state allocated around EGP 50 million to compensate the owners of the affected shops when the expropriation decision was issued in 2020, while actual implementation began years later, during which prices rose sharply. He adds: “The value of the compensation should have been adjusted to become proportionate to prices at the time of implementation, so that the two conditions of fairness and contemporaneity required by the law are met.”<\/span><\/p>\n

He points to another experience in the Al-Maawa area of Alexandria, where families were moved to the “Bashayer El-Kheir” project after their homes were removed on the grounds that they were informal areas, and he says that the problem lay not only in providing alternative units, but in the nature of the legal right granted to the residents. He explains: “Many of the families owned their homes, but the alternative units were not handed over to them with ownership contracts, but rather with a right of usufruct, which raises legal problems relating to the stability of ownership and its transfer to heirs.”<\/span><\/p>\n

He adds that these incidents were the subject of appeals before the Administrative Judiciary Court in Alexandria, explaining that lawyer Hamdy Khalaf filed dozens of lawsuits on behalf of those affected, and considering that these cases reflect a recurring pattern in the application of the expropriation law.<\/span><\/p>\n

Turning to the Tousoun crisis, Fattouh believes that the issue concerns not only the principle of compensation, but how fair and sufficient it is. He says: “The administrative authority talks about the existence of compensation, but the real question is: are these sums enough to buy an alternative home inside Alexandria? In my estimation, the answer is no.”<\/span><\/p>\n

He points out that compensation is, in principle, subject to judicial oversight, but he considers that this oversight is often concentrated on the legality of the expropriation decision itself, without extending to an examination of the adequacy of the compensation or the soundness of the procedures for implementing the decision. He adds: “The court usually looks at the legality of the expropriation decision, while the consequences that flow from it, foremost among them the value of the compensation and the manner of its implementation, remain in need of broader judicial oversight.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

He gives the example of the Abu Qir Metro project, explaining that some residents were asked to vacate their homes temporarily during the construction works, in return for a monthly rent allowance of about EGP 2,000. He comments: “This amount is not enough to rent a suitable home in Alexandria, which places families before financial burdens they cannot bear.”<\/span><\/p>\n

Regarding the road project in Tousoun, Fattouh stresses that expropriation must be the last option, after all possible engineering alternatives have been exhausted, especially if there are other routes that achieve the same purpose without touching the homes. He says: “The right to property is protected by the provisions of the Constitution, the law and the international conventions that Egypt has ratified, and therefore it may not be infringed except within the narrowest limits, and after genuine necessity has been proven.”<\/span><\/p>\n

He considers that Expropriation Law No. 10 of 1990, despite the amendments made to it, no longer keeps pace with the urban and economic transformations that Egypt has witnessed in recent decades, whether in terms of the mechanisms for notifying those concerned, the assessment of compensation, or the guarantees of implementation. He adds: “The law still relies on traditional procedures that are no longer appropriate to the current reality, while property prices, patterns of urban development and the means of communicating with citizens have changed.”<\/span><\/p>\n

Fattouh calls for the legislation to be reconsidered in a way that ensures the modernisation of expropriation mechanisms and obliges administrative authorities to reassess compensation according to market value at the time of implementation, while enabling the judiciary to exercise full oversight over the assessment of compensation, so that its main criterion is the citizen’s ability to obtain a similar alternative home, and not merely the payment of a sum of money that does not keep pace with actual prices.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Recommended reading: <\/b>The Bulldozers of Development Storm the Al-Risa District in El-Arish<\/b><\/a><\/p>\n

<\/b><\/p>\n

What Has Been Happening Recently?<\/b><\/h1>\n

A human rights activist from Alexandria who recently visited the Tousoun area, and who preferred not to be named, says that she saw heavy equipment inside the area, after she had heard from a number of residents, as well as from lawyer Mohamed Ramadan Abu Bibars, that equipment had begun arriving at the project site.<\/span><\/p>\n

She explains, speaking to Zawia3: “From the moment I entered the area, the route of the new axis was clearly visible. I was standing in a tall building overlooking the place, and from there I saw the heavy equipment.”<\/span><\/p>\n

She describes the scene, saying that the size of the equipment gave her an impression resembling what she was used to seeing in pictures of the separation wall in the West Bank, adding: “The moment I saw it, I said to myself: am I in the West Bank?”<\/span><\/p>\n

She points out that she observed, from a long distance, excavators, bulldozers and heavy lifting equipment stationed near the sea and around the new bridge that is under construction, stressing that she was unable to identify their types precisely because of her distance from the site, but that they were “giant equipment intended for construction and demolition works”.<\/span><\/p>\n

She also says that she noticed traces of removal on some buildings, explaining that she saw from the outside houses parts of whose fa\u00e7ades had been removed or some of whose walls had been demolished, without being able to find out the details of what had happened inside the area. <\/span><\/p>\n

She adds that talk of the eviction being carried out soon had been circulating among the residents for a long time, even before the legal dispute began, but that the demolition works that have appeared recently came, as she describes it, as a surprise to the residents.<\/span><\/p>\n

Regarding the security situation, she stresses that she did not see any direct friction between the residents and those carrying out the works while she was there, explaining that the equipment was stationed on vacant land away from the residential blocks. <\/span><\/p>\n

She believes that the choice of these sites “may be an attempt to avoid any friction with the residents in the first phase”, adding that this approach reminds her of what happened on Warraq Island, where the works began in empty areas before approaching the inhabited areas.<\/span><\/p>\n

She thinks that the way each area is dealt with differs according to its urban and social nature, explaining that Warraq Island, for example, still sees resistance at its entrances, and the implementing authorities have not been able to push into the heart of the island, because of its geographical nature and the cohesion of its residents. Ras El-Hekma, on the other hand, is different, because the homes there are far apart, which makes carrying out removals easier.<\/span><\/p>\n

In Tousoun, however, she stresses that the situation is different, because the area contains a contiguous and dense residential block, which makes carrying out large-scale removal operations more complicated. She adds: “I do not think that resorting to direct removal will be the first option; rather, it may be the last option, after other means have been exhausted.”<\/span><\/p>\n

She believes that the most likely means is the continued purchase of homes from the residents, considering that this path is “less costly and less likely to provoke confrontation”, in reference to what the residents are saying about the purchase of some housing units inside the area.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Demolition
Demolition operations in Tousoun<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

On compensation, she says that whatever sums the residents receive will not be enough to provide alternative housing inside Alexandria at current property prices. She explains: “Even if someone receives EGP 300,000, it is very difficult for him to be able to buy another flat inside the city, except perhaps in very remote areas. Also, some houses are home to more than one family, and so the compensation does not cover the needs of all the residents.”<\/span><\/p>\n

She notes that the loss is not limited to the home alone, but extends to sources of livelihood and the networks of social relationships that the residents have built over the years. She says that many of the people of Tousoun work inside the area or own workshops, shops and small businesses, and therefore moving to another place means losing those economic and social ties, in addition to bearing extra burdens relating to transport and the distance of workplaces.<\/span><\/p>\n

She describes what is happening as “forced displacement, even if it comes with financial compensation”, explaining that the core of the problem does not concern the value of the compensation, but the residents’ right to remain in their homes and to choose whether or not they want to sell them. She considers that similar experiences in other areas, including the surroundings of El-Arish Port, have shown that moving residents to alternative places does not make up for their historical and economic attachment to the place where they lived for years.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

<\/b><\/p>\n

A Conflict Stretching Back 17 Years<\/b><\/h1>\n

The<\/span> roots<\/span><\/a> of the crisis go back to a prolonged dispute with state agencies that began more than 17 years ago. In 2008, the area witnessed the first waves of eviction following the issuance of Decree No. 957 of 2008 on the expropriation of areas of agricultural land.<\/span><\/p>\n

On 12 May of the same year, the executive agencies of Alexandria Governorate <\/span>carried out <\/span><\/a>removal decisions against a number of homes, with the participation of Central Security forces and demolition machinery, on the grounds that the land was state property and that the buildings erected on it violated the law, according to what the official bodies announced at the time. The residents, for their part, assert that they had been living on that land for many years, and that it was their main source of livelihood.<\/span><\/p>\n

The area of the disputed land <\/span>amounted <\/span><\/a>to about 42 feddans of agricultural land irrigated from the Montaza Canal, and for decades it remained part of the productive farmland in the area. However, the backfilling works carried out as part of urban development projects led, according to the area’s residents, to the land losing its source of irrigation and becoming unfit for cultivation, which forced the farmers to abandon it after its productive value declined.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/b><\/p>\n

A Court Ruling That Did Not End the Dispute<\/b><\/h1>\n

A number of residents turned to the administrative judiciary to challenge the removal decisions, and in May 2009 the Administrative Judiciary Court issued a ruling suspending the implementation of those decisions, which the residents considered at the time a legal victory that gave them hope of keeping their properties.<\/span><\/p>\n

However, the crisis did not end there. According to litigation files and documents reviewed by the residents and their defence team,<\/span> sequestration<\/span><\/a> measures were later imposed on about 30 feddans of the remaining land, before its ownership was transferred to Alexandria Governorate, a step that the residents’ lawyers consider a violation of the guarantees established by the Agrarian Reform<\/span> Law<\/span><\/a> No. 3 of 1986 with regard to the disposal of agricultural land and compensation mechanisms. The executive bodies, on the other hand, continued to treat the land as state property.<\/span><\/p>\n

In April 2025, the Governor of Alexandria, Lieutenant General Ahmed Khaled,<\/span> issued<\/span><\/a> Decree No. 88 of 2025 forming a committee to make an inventory of the obstructions located on the route of the new ring road in the east of the city, which extends for about 23 kilometres, and on 22 October 2025, the Official Gazette<\/span> published<\/span><\/a> the Prime Minister’s decree expropriating a number of plots of land and properties located within Tousoun to implement the road and connect it to the Mahmoudiya Axis.<\/span><\/p>\n

The residents believe that the project is not limited to developing infrastructure, but is also linked to facilitating access to a private tourism project being implemented in the area, which leads them to consider that the current route of the road serves investment considerations that could have been met through alternatives with a lower social cost, while the government has not announced the existence of any such link nor responded to these accusations.<\/span><\/p>\n

The residents say that their fears are not limited to losing their homes, but extend to the absence of clear guarantees regarding rehousing or the provision of compensation that would allow them to move to alternative areas inside Alexandria, while the government asserts that the expropriation procedures are carried out within the framework of the law and in order to implement projects of public benefit, with the prescribed compensation paid in accordance with the legal procedures that regulate this.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/b><\/p>\n

The Arrest of the Residents’ Representative<\/strong><\/h1>\n

As the crisis escalated, the residents chose Abdallah Mohamed El-Sayed (29 years old) to represent them before government bodies and the media and to coordinate the legal moves relating to the case. He<\/span> was arrested<\/span><\/a> in September 2025, days after a meeting he had with Lieutenant General Kamel El-Wazir, Deputy Prime Minister for Industrial Development and Minister of Transport and Industry, to present the residents’ demands.<\/span><\/p>\n

Abdallah was referred to the Supreme State Security Prosecution, which charged him with joining and financing a terrorist group, spreading false news and misusing social media, and he was later released.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Administrative Judiciary Court in Alexandria had<\/span> referred,<\/span><\/a> last December, the lawsuit filed by 62 residents of the Tousoun area against the President of the Republic, the Prime Minister and the Governor of Alexandria to the State Commissioners Authority to prepare a report setting out the legal opinion, while rejecting the urgent part of the lawsuit.<\/span><\/p>\n

During the examination of the case, the defence team, which included lawyers, among them representatives of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, argued that the planned road project lacks the character of public benefit, considering that the project serves investment purposes more than it achieves a public benefit. The defence also submitted documents and maps that it said show an already existing road, and demanded that it be enabled to obtain official maps of the project and the land surrounding it, in preparation for presenting them to a committee of road engineering professors at Alexandria University, to establish the extent of the actual need for the project and the possibility of implementing it through alternative routes that do not require the removal of the residential block.<\/span><\/p>\n

Commenting on the court’s decision, the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights<\/span> said<\/span><\/a> that the rejection of the urgent part is inconsistent with the dangers facing the residents of Tousoun, given what it described as a direct threat to their right to housing, and affirmed that it would continue to provide legal support to the residents and to defend their right to participation, transparency and access to the public projects that affect their homes and properties.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Recommended reading: <\/b>Lake Nasser Fishermen Refuse to Give Mostakbal Misr 40% of Their Production Without Compensation<\/b><\/a><\/p>\n


\nHundreds of Families Facing the Spectre of Removal<\/b><\/h1>\n

According to the survey data prepared by the residents’ representatives, the expropriation project<\/span> covers<\/span><\/a> about 320 homes, in addition to four mosques and a licensed church serving the area’s residents, who number more than five thousand people, most of them from working families and households with middle and limited incomes.<\/span><\/p>\n

The state allocated total<\/span> compensation<\/span><\/a> estimated at about EGP 1 billion and 262 million, distributed over 596 plots of land and properties, at an average of nearly EGP 2.1 million per property. The residents, however, consider that these estimates are not commensurate with the market value of properties in Alexandria and are not enough to provide alternative housing given the sharp rise in property prices.<\/span><\/p>\n

In the face of the removal project, the residents did not limit themselves to the legal challenge, but enlisted an engineering consultancy to prepare a study proposing an alternative route for the road. According to the<\/span> study<\/span><\/a>, the proposed route achieves the same traffic purpose without the need to remove the existing residential block, while preserving the road’s efficiency and its capacity to absorb traffic. The residents’ representatives say that they submitted this study to the competent authorities, but it was not adopted, nor did they receive, according to their account, a technical response refuting the proposal or explaining the reasons for its rejection.<\/span><\/p>\n

The residents believe that ignoring the alternative reinforces their fears that investment considerations were present in the choice of the project’s final route, while the government asserts that the expropriation works come within the framework of implementing public-benefit projects and developing the road network.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/b><\/p>\n

A Historic Area on the Route of the New Road Project<\/b><\/h1>\n

The<\/span> Tousoun area<\/span><\/a> lies within the Montaza 2 District, in the east of Alexandria Governorate, which has a population of about 575,000 people according to 2023 data from the Central Agency for Public Mobilisation and Statistics (CAPMAS). The area lies roughly in the middle of the district and is home to nearly five thousand people, most of them families who settled there in the 1990s, according to “Diwan El-Omran”.<\/span><\/p>\n

The area bears the name of Prince Omar Tousoun, the grandson of Muhammad Ali Pasha, and it has historical importance alongside its social dimension, as it contains a number of archaeological landmarks, most notably the palace of Prince Omar Tousoun, which dates back to the era of the Muhammad Ali dynasty and is distinguished by an architectural style that reflects that period. However, the palace currently suffers from neglect and is used as a storehouse belonging to an educational body, in addition to other historical landmarks around the area, including the Kosa Pasha Fort and archaeological sites linked to Abu Qir Bay.<\/span><\/p>\n

In this context, Dr Abdel Rahim Rihan, a member of the History and Antiquities Committee at the Supreme Council of Culture,<\/span> warned<\/span><\/a>, in statements to “Diwan El-Omran”, that carrying out construction projects around Abu Qir Bay could affect heritage sites of global value, which include sunken cities and archaeological ships. He said that Egypt is a party to the 2001 UNESCO<\/span> Convention<\/span><\/a> on the Protection of the Underwater Cultural Heritage, which requires specialised archaeological studies to be carried out before any construction works are implemented in those areas, in order to preserve a heritage that is difficult to replace.<\/span><\/p>\n

Despite the continuing dispute before the courts, the Tousoun crisis appears to go beyond a disagreement over the route of a road or the value of compensation. It raises a broader question about the way major development projects are managed. While the government asserts that expropriation projects are carried out in accordance with the law and to achieve public benefit, the residents and their lawyers insist that this benefit is only achieved if it is accompanied by transparency, the study of less harmful alternatives, a guarantee of fair compensation that ensures the stability of families, and respect for citizens’ right to litigation before administrative decisions turn into a ” fait accompli”.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A government decision to expropriate 320 homes, four mosques and a church in Tousoun, Alexandria, to build a ring road, while the residents’ lawyers argue that there is an engineering alternative that has received no response, and demolition equipment is already on site before the lawsuit has been decided before the court’s experts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":19521,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[410],"tags":[],"kateb":[6247],"class_list":["post-16655","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-investigations-en","kateb-rasha-ammar"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/tousoun-homes-cover-2026.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16655","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16655"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16655\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23909,"href":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16655\/revisions\/23909"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19521"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16655"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16655"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16655"},{"taxonomy":"kateb","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/kateb?post=16655"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}