CAIRO (AP) — As desperate Palestinians in sealed-off Gaza try to find refuge under Israel’s relentless bombardment in retaliation for Hamas’ brutal Oct. 7 attack, some ask why neighboring Egypt and Jordan don’t take them in.
The two countries, which flank Israel on opposite sides and share borders with Gaza and the occupied West Bank, respectively, have replied with a staunch refusal. Jordan already has a large Palestinian population.
Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi made his toughest remarks yet on Wednesday, saying the current war was not just aimed at fighting Hamas, which rules the Gaza Strip, “but also an attempt to push the civilian inhabitants to ... migrate to Egypt.” He warned this could wreck peace in the region.
Jordan’s King Abdullah II gave a similar message a day earlier, saying, “No refugees in Jordan, no refugees in Egypt.”
Their refusal is rooted in fear that Israel wants to force a permanent expulsion of Palestinians into their countries and nullify Palestinian demands for statehood. El-Sissi also said a mass exodus would risk bringing militants into Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, from where they might launch attacks on Israel, endangering the two countries’ 40-year-old peace treaty.
Here is a look at what is motivating Egypt’s and Jordan’s stances.
Displacement has been a major theme of Palestinian history. In the 1948 war around Israel’s creation, an estimated 700,000 Palestinians were expelled or fled from what is now Israel. Palestinians refer to the event as the Nakba, Arabic for “catastrophe.”
In the 1967 Mideast war, when Israel seized the West Bank and Gaza Strip, 300,000 more Palestinians fled, mostly into Jordan.
The refugees and their descendants now number nearly 6 million, most living in camps and communities in the West Bank, Gaza, Lebanon, Syria and Jordan. The diaspora has spread further, with many refugees building lives in Gulf Arab countries or the West.
After fighting stopped in the 1948 war, Israel refused to allow refugees to return to their homes. Since then, Israel has rejected Palestinian demands for a return of refugees as part of a peace deal, arguing that it would threaten the country’s Jewish majority.
Egypt fears history will repeat itself and a large Palestinian refugee population from Gaza will end up staying for good.
That’s in part because there’s no clear scenario for how this war will end.
Israel says it intends to destroy Hamas for its bloody rampage in its southern towns. But it has given no indication of what might happen afterward and who would govern Gaza. That has raised concerns that it will reoccupy the territory for a period, fueling further conflict.
The Israeli military said Palestinians who followed its order to flee northern Gaza to the strip’s southern half would be allowed back to their homes after the war ends.
El-Sissi said fighting could last for years if Israel argues it hasn’t sufficiently crushed militants. He proposed that Israel house Palestinians in its Negev Desert, which neighbors the Gaza Strip, until it ends its military operations.
“Israel’s lack of clarity regarding its intentions in Gaza and the evacuation of the population is in itself problematic,” said Riccardo Fabiani, Crisis Group International’s North Africa Project Director. “This confusion fuels fears in the neighborhood.”
Egypt has pushed for Israel to allow humanitarian aid into Gaza, and Israel said Wednesday that it would, though it didn’t say when. According to United Nations, Egypt, which is dealing with a spiraling economic crisis, already hosts some 9 million refugees and migrants, including roughly 300,000 Sudanese who arrived this year after fleeing their country’s war.
But Arab countries and many Palestinians also suspect Israel might use this opportunity to force permanent demographic changes to wreck Palestinian demands for statehood in Gaza, the West Bank and east Jerusalem, which was also captured by Israel in 1967.
El-Sissi repeated warnings Wednesday that an exodus from Gaza was intended to “eliminate the Palestinian cause … the most important cause of our region.” He argued that if a demilitarized Palestinian state had been created long ago in negotiations, there would not be war now.
“All historical precedent points to the fact that when Palestinians are forced to leave Palestinian territory, they are not allowed to return back,” said H.A. Hellyer, a senior associate fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “Egypt doesn’t want to be complicit in ethnic cleansing in Gaza.”
Arab countries’ fears have only been stoked by the rise under Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of hard-right parties that talk in positive terms about removing Palestinians. Since the Hamas attack, the rhetoric has become less restrained, with some right-wing politicians and media commentators calling for the military to raze Gaza and drive out its inhabitants. One lawmaker said Israel should carry out a “new Nakba” on Gaza.
At the same time, Egypt says a mass exodus from Gaza would bring Hamas or other Palestinian militants onto its soil. That might be destabilizing in Sinai, where Egypt’s military fought for years against Islamic militants and at one point accused Hamas of backing them.
Egypt has backed Israel’s blockade of Gaza since Hamas took over in the territory in 2007, tightly controlling the entry of materials and the passage of civilians back and forth. It also destroyed the network of tunnels under the border that Hamas and other Palestinians used to smuggle goods into Gaza.
With the Sinai insurgency largely put down, “Cairo does not want to have a new security problem on its hands in this problematic region,” Fabiani said.
El-Sissi warned of an even more destabilizing scenario: the wrecking of Egypt and Israel’s 1979 peace deal. He said that with the presence of Palestinian militants, Sinai “would become a base for attacks on Israel. Israel would have the right to defend itself ... and would strike Egyptian territory.”
“The peace which we have achieved would vanish from our hands,” he said, “all for the sake of the idea of eliminating the Palestinian cause.”
hmmokby on October 20th, 2023 at 21:19 UTC »
It will be long but sorry.
Firstly, No country wants to take in millions of refugees. They cause tens of thousands of different variables underlying issues such as financial, cultural and security. Even a simple parameter that you would never think of can create a domino effect and cause crises due to population growth. Arab countries such as Egypt, Jordan and Lebanon are currently hosting millions of refugees of Palestinian origin, Syrian origin and Yemeni origin. There are also refugees from Sudan and other African countries in Egypt.
Even though Palestinians are Arabs who speak the same language as Egyptians, their educational level, psychological situations and ability to live by social rules are much more problematic than Egyptians because they have lived in the shadow of war for years. I'm not talking about theories such as low IQ level due to iodine level. Gaza has been a place where anarchy has been rampant for years. Getting used to blood, murder and lawlessness is a big problem from a sociological perspective.
Secondly, The other reason is that Palestinians have always chosen the wrong side on every issue that is not related to them. They participated in the civil war in Lebanon, tried to stage a coup in Jordan, and Palestinians in Kuwait showed joy when Saddam invaded Kuwait. In other words, they betrayed the three Arab countries that helped them.
The third issue is that Israel will always monitor the activities of Palestinians who go from Gaza to Egypt or a third Arab country, and that any activity carried out by Palestinians against Israel while in these Arab countries will harm these countries. Mossad will constantly monitor these countries closely. While even being constantly monitored is a problem, they will feel political pressure on them.
For example, it is very difficult to claim that the Palestinians who settled in the Sinai peninsula will not launch an armed campaign and cause problems at Israel's borders or damage Israel's diplomatic embassies. No country foolishly wants to turn its own land into a war zone.
The fourth option is the possibility that the incoming Palestinians will settle into the country's political and economic system, adopt different political structures than the majority of the local population, and change the fate of the country. We call this demographic change. Even though Palestinians and Egyptians are Arabs who speak the same language, there are certainly differences that will prevent the two sides from integrating very efficiently.
The fifth issue is the possibility that Israel's next target, after swallowing Gaza, will be the West Bank. In fact, Arab countries do not approve of Israel taking over Gaza without sending people away. And if they do this by sending people away, it will be a very serious loss for them. They think that if the Palestinians leave, Israel will capture Gaza more easily. Why is Gaza important to them? Humanitarian reasons, nationalist and religious feelings, the possibility of expanding Israel to expand into its own territory in the future. Of course, Israel offered Gaza to Egypt and the West Bank to Jordan, but despite this, these countries may have such concerns.
Moreover, there is no country in the world other than the Usa that can financially support new immigrants. I don't have a definite comment for Usa either. Americans know better.
Malthus1 on October 20th, 2023 at 20:07 UTC »
The article mentions Egyptian security concerns, but I didn’t see any mention of Jordanian.
The article was somewhat hard to read in this format - but I did not see any mention, when discussing Jordanian reaction, of the long history of Jordan’s involvement with Palestine - in particular, “Black September”, when Jordan’s military fought, and violently suppressed, an attempt by Palestinian groups to take over the country, leading to all sorts of consequences (thousands of Palestinians ejected from the country, unknown but probably heavy loss of life, and several assassinations of Jordanians, including their PM).
The history of this is instructive: a large part of the Jordanian population is actually Palestinian. When Jordan lost the West Bank (it should be noted Jordan owned this territory and did not create a Palestinian state on it - something that annoyed the local residents at the time), thousands of refugees fled into what is now Jordan.
Among them were Palestinian militias, who conducted an ‘irregular’ war against Israel from Jordan. At first, Jordan cooperated with this - but as this inevitably drew Israeli reprisals, they began to have doubts; what sealed their opposition, was that these militias began to act like states with the state - analogous to Hezbollah in Lebanon right now. Moreover, their status as fighters against Israel gave them tremendous prestige in the Arab world. They began to see themselves as possibly taking over the state, and to call for the overthrow of the Jordanian monarch.
The final provocation was when a Palestinian militia group used Jordanian territory for hijackings of airplanes. The Jordanian king sent in the army, and a civil war of sorts broke out, which the PLO lost - with Palestinian refugee camps being shelled by the Jordanian army until the PLO agreed to go.
In short, somewhat similar to the events unfolding in Gaza (a terrorist outrage being ‘the last straw’ to cause a state authority to use violence on the inhabitations of Palestinians, with the aim of driving out the militias causing the outrages). Major difference, of course, is that this was Arab on Arab, and is somewhat less known.
My guess is that this is a pretty important motivating factor in not wanting thousands of Gaza refugees, who may or may not contain among them Hamas members, into the country. It is odd to not even mention it as a factor in the article here.
aaaanoon on October 20th, 2023 at 19:55 UTC »
I watch aljazeera quite alot and over the last week I haven't seen one interview/comment/question about this topic. Even when showing people crowding the border..