The United States announces its decision to withdraw from UNESCO on October 12, 2017, and is immediately followed by Israel.

A mosque attack in al-Rawda, a village in the markaz of Bir al-Abed, in the North Sinai Governorate of Egypt, kills three hundred and eleven worshipers and leaves one hundred and twenty-two wounded on November 24, 2017.

Many of the victims worked at a nearby salt factory and were at the mosque for Friday prayers.

Al-Rawda Mosque, which is located on Sinai's main coastal highway connecting the city of Port Said to Gaza, belongs to the local Jarir clan, of the Sawarka tribe, who follow the Jaririya (Gaririya) Sufi order—an offshoot of the movement of Abu Ahmed al-Ghazawi,of the broader Darqawa order.

The mosque is on the road between El Arish and Bir al-Abed.

The mosque has a smaller zawiyah, a Sufi lodge, attached.

According to local media, attackers in four off-road vehicles planted three bombs; the attackers used the burning wrecks of cars to block off escape routes.

After their detonation, they launch rocket propelled grenades and open fire on worshipers during the crowded Friday prayer at al-Rawda near Bir al-Abed.

When ambulances arrive=d to transport the wounded to hospitals, the attackers open fire on them as well, having selected ambush points from which to target them.

Local residents quickly respond, bringing the wounded to hospitals in their own cars and trucks, and even taking up weapons to fight back.

No group claims responsibility for the attack, although there are reports that the attack appears to be the work of Islamic State's Wilayat Sinai branch.

Islamist militants have been active in the Sinai since July 2013, killing at least one thousand Egyptian security forces personnel.

According to The New York Times, in January 2017 an interview of an insurgent commander in Sinai appeared in issue five of the Islamic State magazine Rumiyah, where the commander condemned Sufi practices and identified the district where the attack occurred as one of three areas where Sufis live in Sinai that Islamic State intended to "eradicate."

The community had been repeatedly threatened to refrain from Sufi practices.

Jund al-Islam, an al-Qaeda-linked jihadist group in Sinai who were formerly affiliated with ISIL, declare their innocence and condemn the attack on the al-Rawda mosque.

On November 25, the Egyptian public prosecutor's office, citing interviews with survivors, will say the attackers brandished the Islamic State flag.

The United States officially recognizes Jerusalem as Israel's capital on December 6, 2017.

A series of constitutional amendments are approved by the Egyptian parliament in 2019, further increasing the President's and the military's power, increasing presidential terms from four years to six years and allowing El-Sisi to run for other two mandates.

The proposals are approved in a referendum.

Abdel Fattah el-Sisi is re-elected in 2018, facing no serious opposition.

A Russian Il-20 reconnaissance plane is shot down by a Syrian surface-to-air missile, killing all fifteen Russian servicemen on board, while the Israeli Air Force conduct missile strikes that hit targets in western Syria.

Russia blames Israel's military for the accident because the Israeli jets that conducted the strikes allegedly used the Russian plane as cover to allow them to approach their targets without being hit by Syrian fire.

Omar al-Bashir is deposed as President of Sudan in a coup d'état, amid mass protests, on April 11, 2019, after nearly thirty years in office.

More than one hundred people are killed when Sudanese troops and Janjaweed militiamen storm and open fire on a protest camp outside of a military headquarters in Khartoum, Sudan, on June 3, 2019.

The African Union suspends Sudan's membership on June 11 "with immediate effect" after the Khartoum massacre.

A car crashes into three other cars causing an explosion outside the National Cancer Institute Egypt in Cairo, Egypt, killing at least twenty people and injuring forty-seven others, on August 4, 2019.

The next day, Mahmoud Tawfik, the Interior Minister of Egypt, will state that the car contained explosives and was to be used in a terrorist operation.

The explosives-filled car had been on its way to commit an attack in another part of the capital.

Tawfik will accuse the Hasm Movement of carrying out the bombing, but the group will deny the allegations.