As a Crisis of Refugees Looms in Gaza, Egypt Fears a Palestinian Influx — and So Does Europe

For all the public-facing bluster in the Arab world about the fate of the 2.3 million Palestinians Arabs in the Gaza Strip, nobody actually wants them — especially not their southern neighbors, the Egyptians. In an ideal scenario, Israel would crush Hamas so swiftly that a looming refugee crisis disappears, but the contours of that crisis are already taking shape.As the battle unfolds in the Gaza Strip, Cairo is drawing a line in the sand and nearby European capitals are eyeing the eastern Mediterranean with alarm. Egypt says it will allow several hundred wounded people from Gaza to enter the country through the Rafah crossing for treatment in Egyptian hospitals. On Wednesday foreign-passport holders currently in Gaza will be allowed to cross into Egypt as well. Egypt can handle that trickle, but what it cannot handle, for logistical as well as security reasons, is a potential deluge of Palestinian refugees. Gaza may be a nightmare for Jerusalem, but it is a recurring bad dream for Cairo, too, and for President al-Sisi in particular. Egypt, of course, controlled the Gaza Strip until the 1967 war with Israel. President Mubarak was less than thrilled to see Hamas take over two years after the Israelis left because Hamas is a terrorist permutation of the Muslim Brotherhood, founded in 1928. When Israel began its aerial counterstrikes against Hamas terror infrastructure in the northern Gaza Strip last month, the IDF suggested that Palestininans there head for the border with Egypt, prompting Cairo to leak warnings to reporters about an imminent “Palestinian exodus.”That has not happened, and Prime Minister Netanyahu has told Italy’s Giorgia Meloni that Israel is not looking for a repeat of Dresden — the German city heavily damaged by British and American aerial bombardment in World War II. But there are estimates that some 300,000 Gazans could still want to flee the Strip. On October 13, Israel’s intelligence ministry drew up a “concept paper” that included a proposal to transfer Gaza’s 2.3 million people to Egypt’s Sinai peninsula. In that scenario the civilian population would first be moved to tent cities in northern Sinai and later to new cities before being relocated elsewhere in Egypt. There would also be a humanitarian corridor of unspecified dimensions, and a security zone would be set up inside Israel as a buffer to block Palestinians from entering. According to the document, while the plan could be “complicated,” any fighting “after the population is evacuated would lead to fewer civilian casualties compared to what could be expected if the population were to remain.”The document also included a proposal for an organized campaign to build regional consensus for the resettlement plan with the message that there would be little hope for refugees to return to Gaza. It named other countries as candidates to accept Palestinian refugees, among them Greece, Spain, and Canada.Europe, of course, is already grappling with a migrant crisis that has proved to be an enduring migraine for Brussels, as well Greece and Italy specifically. Neither of those countries has a plan to accommodate potential Palestinian refugees, whether they would come via Egypt or other avenues. Economic indicators in neither country are excellent, particularly with the war in Ukraine lurching toward the two-year mark.Unsurprisingly, President al-Sisi has said that a mass influx of Gazan refugees would eliminate the Palestinian nationalist cause. He also said that it would risk bringing terrorists into Sinai, from where they could launch attacks against Israel. With the exception of a couple of nice resort towns like Sharm el-Sheikh on the Red Sea coast, the Sinai is a desolate and impoverished place. Mainland Egypt, so to speak, isn’t doing much better. Inflation is running at 38 percent and foreign debt stands at $160 billion.Even if international powers were to dangle a financial package to help facilitate the reception of some refugees, Mr. al-Sisi’s deeply ingrained antipathy toward the Muslim Brotherhood and its Hamas offshoot would likely be a dealbreaker. The fate of Egypt and possibly Mr. al-Sisi’s long-term political fortunes are bound up with that of Gaza, whether he likes it or not. For him as well as others, the best thing would be for what happens to stay in Gaza, but the present clear-eyed Israeli military campaign to dismantle Hamas excepted, most world leaders appear to be grasping at straws. One such is a seasoned jet-setter, Secretary Blinken, who ahead of another flight to Israel stated that he’s looking at “a variety of possible permutations” for the future of Gaza once Hamas is gone. Those options are said to include the possibility of a multinational force with possible American participation, the establishment of a peacekeeping force modeled on one that oversees the 1979 Egypt-Israel peace treaty, or placing Gaza under provisional United Nations oversight. None of those three options would be nearly so problematic if Gaza were not already so overpopulated, but it is. This demographic juggernaut and all the pressures it implies is the flip side of the political one and there is no welcome mat wide enough to make things any easier — for Jerusalem, Cairo, or anyone in between.

As a Crisis of Refugees Looms in Gaza, Egypt Fears a Palestinian Influx — and So Does Europe

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