Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi on Wednesday repeated that his government will accept no Palestinian refugees from Gaza.
Sisi instead suggested moving the Palestinians to the Negev Desert “till the militants are dealt with.”
Egypt is the only country that borders Gaza besides Israel, but Sisi said no Palestinians will be allowed through the heavily fortified and locked-down border crossing. He claimed his own population would angrily protest against moving Palestinians into Egyptian Sinai.
“If it came to it, I could call on the Egyptian people to come out and express their rejection of this proposal, and you would see millions of Egyptians,” he threatened.
Sisi also feared a heavy Palestinian presence could turn Sinai into a base for terrorist attacks against Israel, which is not exactly a ringing endorsement for other nations to accept Palestinian refugees.
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“The idea of displacing Palestinians to Sinai means dragging Egypt into a war against Israel,” he said. “Sinai would become a base for operations against Israel and, in this case, it would be within Israel’s right to defend itself and its national security. It would direct attacks on Egyptian land.”
The Egyptian president tried to soften his own blunt security concerns by claiming Israel wants to herd the Palestinians into Egypt so they will never get their own state carved out of Israeli territory.
“What is happening now in Gaza is an attempt to force civilian residents to take refugee and migrate to Egypt, which should not be accepted,” Sisi said on Wednesday.
Sisi speculated that the “forced displacement of Palestinians from Gaza into Egypt” would lead to “the displacement of Palestinians from the West Bank into Jordan,” making “the establishment of a State of Palestine impossible.” The Jordanian monarchy has also refused to accept Palestinian refugees.
“Egypt rejects any attempt to resolve the Palestinian issue by military means or through the forced displacement of Palestinians from their land, which would come at the expense of the countries of the region,” he declared.
Sisi’s alternative was to move Palestinian civilians into camps in the Negev Desert of Israel.
“If there is an idea to displace Palestinians from Gaza, why not transfer them to the Negev until the armed groups in Gaza, such as Hamas and PIJ, are eliminated?” he suggested.
“PIJ” is Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the group the Israeli government accused of launching the “hospital bombing” rocket that Hamas propagandists falsely blamed on an Israeli airstrike on Tuesday. Much of the Western media, several U.S. politicians, and almost every Arab leader – including Sisi – uncritically repeated this propaganda.
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Asked about humanitarian aid for Gaza piling up on Egypt’s side of the Rafah border crossing for the past six days, Sisi claimed “developments on the ground and the repeated bombings by Israel of the Palestinian side of the crossing have prevented operations” to distribute the supplies.
Sisi has criticized Israel’s military response to the Hamas atrocities, although he generally acknowledges Israel’s right to defend its citizens. On Sunday, Sisi told visiting U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken that Israel’s airstrikes in Gaza have already “exceeded” its legitimate right to self-defense and become “collective punishment” against the Palestinians.
The Times of Israel (TOI) truculently noted that Sisi went on to lie about Jews supposedly never facing persecution in modern Egypt.
“You said that you are a Jewish person,” Sissi told Blinken. “I am an Egyptian person who grew up next to Jews in Egypt. They have never been subjected to any form of oppression or targeting and it has never happened in our region that Jews were targeted.”
“Egypt’s Jewish community, which dates back millennia, numbered around 80,000 in the 1940s, but today stands at fewer than 20 people. The departure of Egypt’s Jews was fueled by rising nationalist sentiment after Israel’s founding in 1948 and during the Arab-Israeli wars, harassment, and some direct expulsions by then-Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser,” TOI observed in response.