Cairo has said the expulsion of so many Palestinians from their homes would be in breach of international law, and a national security risk for Egypt that is liable to bankrupt the country’s ailing economy. Palestinians themselves, and other Arab states, fear refugees would never be allowed back to their homes.
Israeli diplomats deny their goal is to expel Palestinians from Gaza as they fight Hamas, although the defence minister, Yoav Gallant has said the plan is to “eliminate everything”. Another minister, Gideon Sa’ar, has said Gaza “must be smaller at the end of the war”.
Danny Ayalon, a former Israeli ambassador to the US, said Egypt should take people temporarily. “There is a huge expanse, almost endless space in the Sinai desert just on the other side of Gaza,” he said.
The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, discussed the possibility Israel forcing Palestinians over the border with the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, on Sunday, his second visit to Riyadh in his crisis round of shuttle diplomacy. Blinken is expected in Cairo later on Sunday.
All Arab states are opposed to the move and warn it may lead to a regional war, but if the expulsions go ahead they may have no choice to help fund the establishment of refugee camps. Most Palestinians in Gaza have relations who were expelled in 1948, and fear that a further mass expulsion could represent the death knell for aspirations of a Palestinian state.
The Egyptian president, Abdel Fatah al-Sisi said on Thursday that Palestinians in Gaza must “stay steadfast and remain on their land.”
The Turkish foreign minister, Hakan Fidan, said he was in full agreement with Egypt. Speaking in Cairo he said: “I repeat once again that we are inviting Israel to comply with international law. We are against the displacement of Palestinians. We will never approve of the policy of expulsion to Egypt.”
The Egyptian foreign minister, Sameh Shoukry, meeting his German counterpart, Annalena Baerbock, on Saturday also stressed that he would not allow foreign nationals trapped in Gaza, including US citizens waiting by the Rafah gate, to leave unless Israel allowed aid convoys into the territory. The refusal is one of the few bargaining chips that Sisi has.
But as Cairo seeks to avert a mass exodus from Gaza, it is at the same time makeing emergency preparations for such an eventuality. Egypt insists the plans are for relatively small numbers of refugees and that it is against the idea of large camps, fearing they could house individuals and groups opposed to Sisi and Israel. Cairo is also fighting its own Islamist insurgency in the Sinai peninsula.
Egypt signed a peace treaty with Israel in 1979 after decades of conflict, and the two countries maintain full diplomatic relations. There are thought to be more than six million Palestinians in the diaspora, including three million in Jordan and 400,000 in Lebanon. The number in Egypt is smaller. Since the 1978 Camp David peace accords few Palestinians in Egypt are recognised either as refugees or citizens.
In a sign that Egypt is making preparations to receive some refugees, the northern Sinai governor, Gen Mohamed Abdel-Fadil Shousha, lifted a state of emergency that had been in place for years in light of security tensions between the army and Islamist groups in the region.
He directed “all local authorities to list schools, housing units and vacant land to be used as shelters if required” in anticipation of a wave of Palestinians fleeing the Israeli offensive. The camps are being prepared at Sheikh Zuweid and Rafah, as are government buildings, including schools and headquarters, that can be used as shelters. The camps would be guarded by the Egyptian army. An armed uprising spread in northern Sinai after the military overthrew President Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood in 2013.
Egypt, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates have contributed to an aid convoy of 143 trucks for use by the UN relief agency for Palestinian refugees (Unrwa) that are waiting to go into Gaza, but the main crossing remains closed. Local hospitals are also being prepared for the wounded.
Blinken met UAE officials on Saturday evening in Abu Dhabi.
The US Congress recently withheld US aid money because of Egypt’s human rights record under Sisi, but there will be pressure to lift those restrictions if Egypt lets in refugees.
Tariq Al-Khouli, the undersecretary of the foreign relations committee in the Egyptian parliament asked: “How can the world, which was so vocal in defending Ukraine and so quick to show all means of support to them, turn a blind eye to the help of the grieving Palestinian people?”
Accusing the west of double standards, he said the displacement of the people of the Gaza Strip would be a crime.
The Jordanian foreign minister, Ayman Safadi, also insisted during a press conference on Saturday that Palestinians would not be allowed to flee into the country.
He said that King Abdullah II had stated that forcing Palestinians to flee their homeland was a red line that he would not accept.
Source: theguardian
Author: Patrick Wintour Diplomatic editor
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