By K.R. Kamphoefner
The US is increasing its pressure on Egypt to open the Rafah border crossing and allow in all Gazans who want to escape the brutal carnage of Israel’s war on Gaza. Recently released documents show Israel wants to push all Gazans into Egypt. The international community should not allow this.
Egypt can’t afford it. It is a developing country, and like many other developing economies, has an enormous debt. Meanwhile, inflation is at an all-time high, approaching 38% a month. That means many food items have doubled in price this year. Even if international donors offered to pay all the expenses of incoming refugees, Egypt should still not open the Rafah border.
The Sinai is not just an empty space. There is nowhere to put a large influx of people. Apparently, Israel assumes that the Sinai, because it is a desert, has plenty of room for them. But all the land in the Sinai is owned by someone. In northern Sinai, Egypt has repeated skirmishes with Bedouin fighters aligned with ISIS. A new influx of people in that area would considerably destabilize the northern Sinai, as well as creating chaos at that border.
It's long been Israel’s agenda to push out all Palestinians from the land “from the river to the sea,” has always been the goal of Israeli Zionists. Israeli historians have carefully documented the 1946 ethnic cleansing; the most famous of them is Ilan Pappe, (The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, 2006). In recent interviews, Pappe had demonstrated how Israel’s war on Gaza continues the process. While the eyes of the world are on Gaza, Israel gave 16,000 more weapons to extremist Israeli settlers in the West Bank. The settlers attack neighboring Palestinian villages and towns, protected by IDF soldiers and Israeli police. The West Bank attacks are for the same purpose: to make the conditions of life so desperate that people want to leave.
Forcibly removing the Gazans neatly fits the Zionist goal of claiming all the land, but this has serious implications under international law. First and foremost, the “forcible population relocation of civilian populations as part of an organized offensive against that population is a crime against humanity punishable by the International Criminal Court (ICC) (Legal Information Institute, 2023). Other recent violations of international law include the taking of civilian hostages, bombing civilians, forced displacement, and ethnic cleaning.
“Temporary” means “permanent” with refugees from Israel’s wars. Seventy percent of Gazans are refugees from Israel’s 1948 war. Their situation should have been resolved many years ago, but 75 years later, they are still refugees. Instead of negotiating a solution for the 1948 refugees, Israel wants to make them refugees for a second time. This, again, is all in contravention of international law, as well as violates the many peace agreements Israel itself has signed.
President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi has clearly refused for Gazans to be forcibly displaced to Egypt. He said, “Not only [because] we in Egypt will not allow it, but it is perilous to the [Palestinian] cause,” he said, noting that it would complicate the prospects of the two-state solution.
Transferring Gazans to Egypt would be the death knell for the Palestinian cause. The goal of the Palestinian cause is national self-determination. The two-state solution, embedded in part in the Oslo Accords, was intended to resolve this with an independent state based on Gaza and the West Bank as the land for a Palestinian state, with East Jerusalem as its capital, living side-by-side in peace with Israel. Eliminating Gaza will eliminate the two-state solution.
Indeed, many Palestinians do not want to leave Gaza. They want an end to the fighting and a chance to rebuild their homes and their lives in their own land.
If, out of humanitarian concern, the US wants to assist those Gazans who want to, let it institute a new program for taking them as refugees to the US. The US can afford it—Egypt cannot.
US pressure and Europe’s diplomatic pressure would be better spent on implementing an immediate ceasefire and calling for new negotiations for the two-nations solution to the conflict.
To respond to the urgent humanitarian situation, Egypt is working hard on getting in humanitarian assistance. Al-Arish Airport is accepting planeloads of supplies from many countries. Israel prefers to blocking the efforts, has cut off food, water, and medical supplies to Gaza. Israel has proven to be a very difficult party to the negotiations for allowing in humanitarian assistance. On Wednesday, Egypt began taking in injured Gazans, including opening a new field hospital to triage treatment for the wounded. Dual passport holders have been allowed to exit Gaza for other countries.
Note: +972 has released printed the texts which call for the ethnic cleansing of Gaza: https://www.972mag.com/intelligence-ministry-gaza-population-transfer/
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