Source: New.TheCradle.co
Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi stated on 18 October that Israel is not seeking to defeat Hamas militarily, but to push Gaza’s civilians to seek refuge in Egypt.
Sisi made the comments in response to criticism from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The prime minister complained that Egypt is not opening the Rafah Crossing to allow Palestinians to flee Israeli bombing to Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula.
According to source at an Egyptian security agency speaking with Al Qahera News Wednesday, Egypt will not allow the evacuation of foreigners from Gaza and would meet any escalation from the Israeli side with escalation.
President Sisi stressed that Egypt is a sovereign state and rejects the Israeli attempt to make Gazans refugees in Egypt.
If Israel attempts to do so, “you will see millions of Egyptians are ready to demonstrate as an expression of their rejection of the displacement of Palestinians from Gaza,” Sisi added.
President Sisi added during a joint press conference with the German Chancellor Olaf Schulz at the presidential headquarters that “Egypt rejects the military solution to the Palestinian cause or any attempts to forcibly displace the Palestinians from their land, or for this to come at the expense of the region.”
“Displacing Palestinians from the Gaza Strip to Sinai means transferring the conflict and the killings from Gaza to Sinai, where Sinai becomes a base for launching operations against Israel, and in this case, Israel will have the right to defend itself, so it directs its strikes against Egyptian territory.”
Sisi further added, “If Israel is thinking of displacement as a solution, there is the Negev desert in Israel, where they can transfer the Palestinians to until Israel finishes its announced military operation against armed groups, and then return them.”
Palestinians fear that if Gazans are expelled to Egypt by Israeli bombs, Israel will never allow them to return, while Egyptians fear Egypt would be used as a base by Palestinians in the ongoing effort to end the Israeli occupation and realize their right of return.
In 1948, Zionist militias ethnically cleansed 750,000 Palestinians from Palestine to conquer the territory they wanted for the creation of a Jewish state. Palestinians became refugees in Egypt-controlled Gaza, the Jordanian controlled West Bank, as well as Lebanon, Syria and Jordan itself.
The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) led by Yasser Arafat established military forces in Jordan and later Lebanon to attack Israel and allow the refugees to return….