While the desperate Palestinians in Loop try to shelter from the bombings carried out by Israel in retaliation for the brutal Hamas attack on October 7, many wonder why neighboring countries Egypt and Jordan They don’t welcome them.
Both nations, which flank Israel from opposite points and share borders with Gaza and the occupied West Bank, respectively, have adamantly refused. Jordan already has a large Palestinian population.
Egyptian President Abdul Fatah El Sisi made his harshest statements to date on Wednesday, saying that the goal of the current war is not only to combat Hamas, which rules the Gaza Strip, “but also an attempt to force the civilian inhabitants to… emigrate to Egypt”. He warned that this could ruin peace in the region.
King Abdullah II of Jordan gave a similar message a day earlier, stating: “There will be no refugees in Jordan, there will be no refugees in Egypt.”
Their refusal is rooted in the fear that Israel wishes to force a permanent expulsion of Palestinians to their countries and nullify Palestinian demands for their own state. Sisi also maintained that a mass exodus would create the risk of militants arriving in the Egyptian Sinai Peninsula, from where they could attack Israel, putting at risk the peace treaty between both nations reached 40 years ago.
Below we explain what motivates the positions of Egypt and Jordan.
A story of displacement
Displacement has been a central theme in Palestinian history. In the 1948 war surrounding the creation of Israel, an estimated 700,000 Palestinians were expelled or fled the territory that is now Israel. The Palestinians call this event the Nakba“catastrophe” in Arabic.
In the 1967 Six-Day War, when Israel seized the West Bank and Gaza Strip, another 300,000 Palestinians fled, mostly to Jordan.
Today, refugees and their descendants number almost 6 million, most of them settled in camps and communities in the West Bank, Gaza, Lebanon, Syria and Jordan. The diaspora has spread further: many refugees have made their lives in the Arab countries of the Persian Gulf or in the West.
After the fighting of the 1948 war concluded, Israel refused to allow refugees to return to their homes. Israel has since rejected the Palestinian demand that the refugees return as part of a peace treaty, arguing that it would threaten the country’s Jewish majority.
Egypt fears that history will repeat itself, and that a considerable population of Palestinian refugees from Gaza will end up staying in Egyptian territory permanently.
No guarantee of return
This is due, in part, to the fact that there is no clear scenario for how this war will end.
Israel says it intends to destroy Hamas because of the bloody onslaught it launched in its southern towns. But he has given no indication of what might happen next and who would govern Gaza. That has raised concerns that it will reoccupy the territory for some time, fueling further conflict.
The Israeli military said Palestinians who heeded its order to flee northern Gaza to the southern half of the strip will be allowed to return to their homes after the end of the war. Egypt is not convinced of this.
El Sisi said the fighting could drag on for years if Israel claims it has not sufficiently crushed the militants. He proposed that Israel host Palestinians in the Negev desert, which borders the Gaza Strip, until it concludes its military operations.
“Israel’s lack of clarity regarding its intentions in Gaza and the evacuation of the population are problematic in themselves,” said Riccardo Fabiani, North Africa project director for Crisis Group International, an independent organization that works to prevent wars.. “This confusion fuels fears in the region.”
Egypt has pressured Israel to allow humanitarian aid into Gaza, and Israel said Wednesday it would do so but did not specify when. According to the United Nations, Egypt, facing a growing economic crisis, is already home to nearly 9 million refugees and migrants, including some 300,000 Sudanese who arrived this year after fleeing war in their country.
But Arab countries and many Palestinians also suspect that Israel could use this opportunity to impose permanent demographic changes in order to overturn Palestinian demands for their own state in Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem, which Israel also captured in 1967. .
Sisi repeated his warnings on Wednesday that the goal of an exodus from Gaza is “eliminate the Palestinian cause… the most important cause in our region.” He argued that if a demilitarized Palestinian state had been created in negotiations long ago, there would not be a war today.
“All historical precedents point to the fact that when Palestinians are forced to leave Palestinian territory, they are not allowed to return.”said HA Hellyer, senior research associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “Egypt does not want to be complicit in ethnic cleansing in Gaza.”
Arab countries’ fears have been stoked by the rise in Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government of far-right parties that openly talk about expelling the Palestinians. Since the Hamas attack, the rhetoric has become less restrained, with some right-wing politicians and media commentators calling for the military to demolish Gaza and expel its inhabitants. A legislator declared that Israel should carry out a “new Nabka” andn Gaza.
Concerns about Hamas
At the same time, Egypt says a mass exodus from Gaza would bring Hamas militants or others to its territory. That could destabilize the Sinai, where the Egyptian military fought for years against Islamic militants, at one point blaming Hamas for supporting them.
Egypt has backed the blockade Israel imposed on Gaza since Hamas seized control of the territory in 2007, strictly controlling the entry of materials as well as the entry and exit of civilians. It has also destroyed the network of tunnels under the border that Hamas and other Palestinians used to smuggle goods into Gaza.
With the insurgency in the Sinai largely crushed, “Cairo does not want to have a new security problem on its hands in this problematic region,” Fabiani pointed out.
Sisi warned of an even more destabilizing scenario: the wreckage of the 1979 peace treaty between Egypt and Israel. He said that, with the presence of Palestinian militants, the Sinai “It would become a base for attacks against Israel. “Israel would have the right to defend itself… and would attack Egyptian territory.”
“The peace we have achieved would slip from our hands,” warned, “and all in the name of the idea of eliminating the Palestinian cause.”
Source: AP
Source: Gestion
Ricardo is a renowned author and journalist, known for his exceptional writing on top-news stories. He currently works as a writer at the 247 News Agency, where he is known for his ability to deliver breaking news and insightful analysis on the most pressing issues of the day.
