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Egypt’s president said that he would not allow any mass influx of refugees from Gaza, since it would lead to the displacement of Palestinians from the West Bank into Jordan
Egypt’s president said that he would not allow any mass influx of refugees from Gaza, since it would lead to the displacement of Palestinians from the West Bank into Jordan.
After talks with visiting German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi blamed Israel’s air strikes on the Rafah crossing between Gaza and Egypt for the failure to get aid to the territory’s 2.4 million people. The displacement of Palestinians from Gaza to Egypt means the same displacement will take place for Palestinians from the West Bank into Jordan, he added. Sisi said that the exodus of Palestinians from their homeland would lead to the non-existence of their homeland, which they have been fighting for.
Sisi’s meeting with the German chancellor came as Gaza faced a 12th straight day of ferocious Israeli bombardment in retaliation for a shock cross-border attack launched by Hamas on October 7 that killed at least 1,400 people, most of them civilians. About 3,000 people have been killed in Gaza, which is nearly out of electricity, food, water, and fuel.
Pressure has mounted for aid to be allowed in through Egypt’s Rafah crossing with Gaza, the only access to the besieged territory not controlled by Israel. Sisi said Egypt did not close the crossing, but that developments on the ground and the repeated bombings by Israel of the Palestinian side of the crossing have prevented its operation. Several hundreds of lorries carrying aid have been waiting for six days on the Egyptian side of the crossing, which Israeli aircraft have bombed four times.
Scholz told reporters Berlin and Cairo are working together to get humanitarian access to the Gaza Strip as quickly as possible. The two men also warned against the threat of regional spillover, with the Egyptian president calling for immediate international intervention to put a stop to a dangerous military escalation that may get out of control. Scholz reiterated that Germany sought to avoid a conflagration in the Middle East and warned Hezbollah and Iran once again not to intervene in this conflict.
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In 1979, Egypt became the first Arab state to make peace with Israel following the Camp David Accords of the previous year. Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas also has warned that the displacement of Gazans to Egypt would amount to a second Nakba when more than 760,000 Palestinians fled or were expelled from their lands during the war that accompanied Israel’s creation in 1948. Most of Gaza’s population are refugees from that exodus.
