Egypt, the only country bordering the Gaza Strip apart from Israel, and Jordan, which borders the West Bank, firmly reject hosting Palestinian refugees, claiming to protect the Palestinian cause.
While yesterday Egypt and Israel reached an agreement, thanks to the mediation of the United States, for 20 trucks with humanitarian aid to enter Gaza through the Rafah crossing in northern Sinai, at the earliest this Friday, people in Gaza They will still not be able to leave the enclave. Despite pressure from the US, Israel and some media, such as "The Economist" magazine, among other Western actors, Cairo refused to allow people from Gaza to enter Egypt, not even for evacuation. of foreigners. What are your reasons?
Egypt and Jordan, like many Arab states, believe that if the Palestinians flee to other countries, it would be leaving Israel free to impose itself on Gaza and the West Bank.
Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sissi stated this Wednesday that the current war is not only aimed at fighting Hamas, which rules the Gaza Strip, "but is also an attempt to push civilian inhabitants to emigrate to Egypt," which “would lead to a similar displacement” to Jordan of Palestinians in the West Bank. For the Egyptian president, Israeli requests to open the Rafah crossing to Palestinian refugees aim to "eliminate the Palestinian cause... the most important cause of our region."
Contrary to Arab positions, the Israeli army assured that Palestinians who followed its order to flee from northern Gaza to the southern Strip will be able to return to their homes when the war ends. However, history makes Egypt suspicious.
The war that several Arab countries started against Israel in 1948, following its unilateral declaration of independence, forced 700,000 Palestinians living in the territories that were then conquered by Israel to abandon their homes. Despite numerous UN resolutions demanding the right of return for those people, Israel has until today refused to allow Palestinian refugees to return to their homes.
"All historical precedents indicate that when Palestinians are forced to leave Palestinian territory, they are not allowed to return," said H.A. Hellyer, senior research associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, told the AP agency. "Egypt does not want to be complicit in ethnic cleansing in Gaza."
Arab countries are concerned that history will repeat itself, especially given the positions of some members of Israel's current far-right government, who advocate the expulsion of the Palestinians. The Hamas attack on October 7 has fueled the most radical sectors of Netanyahu's government, such as legislator Ariel Kallner, who asked that Gaza receive another "Nakba" (catastrophe in Arabic) in retaliation, a term used by the Palestinians. to refer to their mass exodus of 1948.
Egypt is currently facing a serious economic crisis and already hosts some 9 million refugees and migrants, according to the United Nations, so an intense arrival of Palestinian refugees to the Sinai could compromise the country's security. Riccardo Fabiani, director of the North Africa project for the Crisis Group organization, said that with the presence of Palestinian militants, the Sinai "would become a base for attacks against Israel," which could trigger Israeli attacks on Egypt and end the 1979 peace agreement between both countries.
On Jordan's part, the refusal to relocate the population of Gaza has also been firm. King Abdullah II of Jordan warned against "any attempt to forcibly remove Palestinians from all Palestinian territories or cause their internal displacement." "No refugees in Jordan, no refugees in Egypt," the sovereign said on Tuesday.
To protect the Gazan population, Egyptian President Al-Sissi proposed that Israel host the Palestinians of the Strip in the Negev desert, near Gaza. It is also worth remembering that even before the start of this new war, the movement of people to Gaza through the Rafah crossing was already very limited. Since Hamas took control of Gaza in 2007, Egypt has helped impose a blockade of the enclave and has heavily restricted the flow of people and goods with the enclave.
