Egypt Warily Eyes Gaza as Struggle Builds Stress on Its Border

The stress on Egypt is constructing.

Greater than half of Gaza’s inhabitants is squeezed into depressing tent cities in Rafah, a small metropolis alongside Egypt’s border, left with nowhere else to go by Israel’s navy marketing campaign. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel has threatened to overrun the realm, and on Friday, he directed his forces to plan the evacuation of civilians from Rafah to clear the best way for a brand new offensive in opposition to Hamas. However it isn’t clear the place these individuals may go.

Somewhat than opening its border to provide Palestinians a refuge from the onslaught, because it has executed for individuals fleeing different conflicts within the area, Egypt has strengthened the frontier with Gaza and warned Israel that any transfer that may ship Gazans spilling into its territory may jeopardize the decades-old Israel-Egypt peace treaty, an anchor of Center East stability since 1979.

Israel’s subsequent steps within the battle may drive such a breaking level.

Throughout previous conflicts within the area, Egypt has taken in refugees from Syria, Yemen and neighboring Sudan. However on this battle, it has reacted very in a different way to the plight of its Arab neighbors, spurred by a mixture of alarm over its personal safety and worry that the displacement may turn into everlasting and undermine Palestinian aspirations for statehood.

Egyptian leaders are additionally cautious of the Islamist Hamas stoking militancy and spreading affect of their nation, as Egypt has spent years attempting to quash Islamists and an insurgency at residence.

A Hamas-led assault on Israel on Oct. 7 set off the battle in Gaza, and Mr. Netanyahu has known as Rafah one in every of “Hamas’s last remaining strongholds.” Nonetheless correct that label, Rafah can also be now the full-to-bursting shelter of last resort for about 1.4 million hungry, determined individuals, in accordance with the United Nations, most of them displaced from elsewhere in Gaza.

Egyptian officers have urged their Western counterparts to inform Israel that they see any transfer to drive Gazans to cross into Sinai as a violation that may successfully droop the 1979 peace treaty, in accordance with a senior Western diplomat in Cairo. One other senior Western official, a U.S. official and an Israeli official stated the message was much more direct, with Egypt threatening to droop the treaty if the Israeli navy pushed Gazans into Egypt.

The Egyptian authorities repeated that warning to Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken on Wednesday, when Mr. Blinken was in Cairo to fulfill with President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, the Israeli official stated.

The U.S. official stated Egypt had made clear it was ready to militarize its border, maybe with tanks, if Palestinians start to be pushed into Sinai.

Whereas Egyptians have by no means warmed to Israel in additional than 4 a long time of peace, their treaty has been one of many few steady constants in a turbulent area. Egypt has benefited from the safety cooperation and from the beneficiant American assist — together with greater than $1 billion in annual aid — that it introduced.

And regardless of the rising tensions, Egyptian and Israeli officers are nonetheless speaking with one another.

The Israeli official stated that navy officers from each international locations, who’ve a long-established relationship of belief born of safety cooperation across the border, are additionally talking privately about Israel’s doubtless incursion into Rafah. In these discussions, the Egyptians requested Israel to restrict the operation’s scale, this official stated.

The 2 international locations, which have collectively enforced a crippling blockade on Gaza since Hamas took management in 2007, are additionally discussing giving Israel a larger position in securing the slim buffer zone that runs alongside the roughly nine-mile border between Egypt and Gaza, in accordance with regional and Western officers.

However state-owned Egyptian media retailers have revealed nameless denials by Egyptian officers about any settlement, signaling the Cairo authorities’s reluctance for its inhabitants to see any trace of cooperation with Israel. And Israel’s speak of controlling the zone has solely added to strains within the relationship.

Egypt is Gaza’s solely neighbor apart from Israel, and since Israel invaded the territory in October, Egypt has helped about 1,700 gravely wounded Palestinians leave Gaza for remedy in Egyptian hospitals.

However Cairo categorically rejects any bigger inflow of Palestinian refugees onto Egyptian soil.

“There is a difference between hosting refugees and agreeing on forced displacement of a people,” Hani Labib, a pro-government commentator in Egypt, stated Tuesday on a night speak present.

The sensitivity dates again to 1948, when tons of of 1000’s of Palestinians fled or have been expelled from their properties within the battle surrounding Israel’s creation, by no means to return.

Many Palestinians and different Arabs confer with this chapter in historical past because the nakba, Arabic for disaster, and the everlasting displacements of 1948 have reverberated within the Arab world’s reminiscence as an injustice by no means remedied.

To many individuals in Egypt and throughout the Center East, Israel forcing Gazans to go away their properties throughout this battle, and maybe flee Gaza altogether, would quantity to a second nakba.

Early within the battle, Israel pushed in diplomatic discussions for Gazans to maneuver to Sinai, however Israeli officers have stopped formally advocating this since November.

Nonetheless, feedback by hard-line Israeli authorities ministers endorsing the expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza and open calls from some Israelis to rebuild Jewish settlements within the enclave have fed Arab fears that, after the battle, Gazans who depart could be unable to return — additional undermining hopes for a future Palestinian state.

These worries additionally set Gazans aside from refugees in different crises.

Although some Gazans have stated in interviews with The Occasions that they hope to flee to Egypt because the battle has intensified, many, motivated by a bone-deep dedication to the dream of statehood, reject any suggestion of abandoning their homeland.

“Egypt is not an option for me to run to,” stated Fathi Abu Snema, 45, who has been sheltering in a Rafah faculty for 4 months. “I prefer to die here.”

Egypt’s president, Mr. el-Sisi, has sworn repeatedly to reject what he calls the “liquidation of the Palestinian cause,” successful applause even from Egyptians annoyed with him on different grounds.

However maybe extra necessary, Cairo additionally dreads what Palestinian refugees in Sinai would imply for Egypt’s safety. Restive, embittered refugees may launch assaults at Israel from Egyptian soil, inviting Israeli retaliation, or be recruited into the native insurgency in Sinai that Egypt has battled for years.

Egypt additionally fears the unfold onto its territory of Hamas due to its origins as an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, the Egyptian Islamist political group. The Brotherhood got here to energy in free elections after Egypt’s 2011 Arab Spring rebellion. However Mr. el-Sisi’s regime, which overthrew the Brotherhood in 2013, has vilified the group as terrorists and spent the previous decade attempting to eradicate it from Egypt.

In one other signal of the rising stress on Egypt, Israel desires management over the slim buffer zone separating Gaza and Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula.

Mr. Netanyahu has stated that Israel should management the zone, referred to as the Philadelphi Corridor, and analysts say Egypt is apprehensive that Israel desires to grab it as a way to push Gazans into Sinai.

Israeli leaders have cited safety considerations, saying Hamas smuggles weaponry by the Gaza-Egypt border zone.

However years in the past, Egypt destroyed the primary smuggling tunnels from its territory into Gaza, flooded them with seawater and razed the buildings that supplied cowl for individuals utilizing the tunnels. It argues that it has done its part to sever smuggling routes.

Israeli navy and intelligence officers have concluded {that a} vital quantity of Hamas’s weaponry comes not from smuggling, however from unexploded munitions fired by Israel into Gaza and recycled by Hamas, in addition to from arms stolen from Israeli bases, in accordance with a current Occasions investigation.

Sinai is such a delicate area for Egypt that it usually bars most nonresidents from coming into it, together with journalists. However interviews and movies taken in recent times by the Sinai Basis for Human Rights, a Britain-based group that monitors abuses within the space, present that the Egyptian navy continued working to destroy new tunnels till not less than late 2020. The fabric was shared with The Occasions.

The group interviewed 5 smugglers in Sinai who stated smuggling between Egypt and Gaza got here to a halt not less than two years in the past. It additionally spoke to an Egyptian soldier stationed on the border who stated troops have been ordered to shoot any transferring object they noticed within the space to discourage smuggling. Its employees has noticed the Egyptian navy utilizing patrols, drones and bulldozers to protect in opposition to smuggling.

With its navy outmatched by Israel’s and its financial system mired in a deep crisis, Egypt has few choices for bending Israel to its will. And its mountain of debt and desperation for overseas forex have raised questions over whether or not Israel’s Western allies may supply wealthy sufficient monetary incentives to influence Egypt to resettle Gazans in Sinai.

However to date, Western leaders, fearing instability in Egypt, have as an alternative pressed Israel to chorus from displacing Gazans to Egypt.

Reporting was contributed by Patrick Kingsley, Zolan Kanno-Youngs and Adam Rasgon from Jerusalem, Nada Rashwan from Cairo, and Abu Bakr Bashir from London.