(Cairo) Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sissi said Wednesday he was against the massive “displacement” of Palestinians from Gaza to Egypt, seeing the risk of “a similar displacement from the West Bank to Jordan » and “the end of the Palestinian cause”.
While receiving German Chancellor Olaf Scholz in Cairo, the head of state gave his most virulent speech since the start of the war between Israel and Hamas, triggered after a surprise attack by the Islamist movement on October 7.
The conflict has left thousands dead on both sides and a million displaced in the small Palestinian territory, shelled by Israel for 12 days. A majority of them took refuge in the south, near Egypt.
Pushing Palestinians to leave their land is “a way of putting an end to the Palestinian cause at the expense of neighboring countries,” said Mr. Sissi.
“The idea of forcing Gazans to move to Egypt will lead to a similar displacement of Palestinians from the West Bank,” territory occupied by Israel, “and this will make the establishment of a State of Palestine impossible,” he said. -he continued.
Before warning: “if I ask the Egyptian people to come out into the streets, there will be millions to support Egypt’s position”, who decreed three days of mourning for the victims of the strike which killed in the night hundreds of people in a hospital in Gaza.
Shortly after, thousands of Egyptians came out in different cities of the most populous Arab country in solidarity with Gaza, according to images broadcast by local media and on social networks. Normally, protesting is illegal in Egypt.
The University of Al-Azhar, the highest Sunni authority, has also called on all Muslims to “invest their wealth in supporting Palestine and its oppressed people”, urging them to “review their dependence to the arrogant West.
“Conflagration in the Middle East”
Mr Scholz called for avoiding a “conflagration in the Middle East”, urging Iran and its Lebanese ally Hezbollah to refrain from “any intervention”.
Mr. Sissi wants “immediate international intervention” to stop a “dangerous military escalation which could escape all control”.
While the world is calling for the opening of the Rafah crossing between Egypt and Gaza, Mr. Sissi reiterated that his country had “not closed it”. Aid is being blocked by “Israeli bombings,” he said.
His head of diplomacy, Sameh Choukri, told the American channel CNN on Tuesday that four Israeli strikes in one week had injured “four Egyptian employees who were participating in repairs”.
For days, hundreds of trucks have been stuck in the Egyptian Sinai desert while the World Health Organization (WHO) now says that “every second we wait for medical help, we lose lives” among the 2 .4 million Gazans.
At the border post, humanitarian workers waiting to enter gathered for prayers for the dead in memory of the victims of the Gaza hospital.
Egypt faces a dilemma: let the Palestinians out with the risk that Israel will prohibit any return or close their only opening to the world not held by Israel and leave them under incessant strikes.
Cairo agrees to “receive the most vulnerable Gazans, those who need care”, as was the case until before the war, “but we will not transfer responsibility from Israel to Egypt”.
“As the occupying force, it is up to Israel to guarantee the security of civilians” in Gaza, Mr. Choukri told the BBC on Tuesday.
Security question
In addition to the question of creating new Palestinian refugees – 760,000 fled or were expelled during the creation of Israel in 1948 – there is also the security question for Egypt.
“By moving the Palestinians to Sinai, we are moving the resistance and the fight to Egypt,” Mr. Sissi said. And if attacks by Palestinian armed groups are launched from Egypt, “Israel will then have the right to defend itself […] and will hit Egyptian soil,” he warned.
So the peace signed between Israel and Egypt in 1979 – making Cairo the first Arab country to recognize Israel and therefore one of the largest recipients of American military aid – “will melt in our hands”.
Recently, a former Israeli official called on Egypt to “play the game” by setting up “temporary” tent camps for Palestinians in the “almost infinite space” of Sinai.
“If the idea is forced displacement, there is the Negev”, a desert in the south of Israel, Mr. Sissi retorted on Wednesday. “And Israel can then send them back (to Gaza) if it wants.”