Israel has quietly tried to build international support in recent weeks for the transfer of several hundred thousand civilians from Gaza to Egypt for the duration of its war in the territory, according to six senior foreign diplomats.
Israeli leaders and diplomats have privately proposed the idea to several foreign governments, framing it as a humanitarian initiative that would allow civilians to temporarily escape the perils of Gaza for refugee camps in the Sinai Desert, just across the border in neighboring Egypt.
The suggestion was dismissed by most of Israel’s interlocutors — who include the United States and Britain — because of the risk that such a mass displacement could become permanent. These countries fear that such a development might destabilize Egypt and lock significant numbers of Palestinians out of their homeland, according to the diplomats, who spoke anonymously in order to discuss a sensitive matter more freely.
The idea has also been firmly rejected by Palestinians, who fear that Israel is using the war — which began on Oct. 7 after terrorists from Gaza raided Israel and killed roughly 1,400 people — to permanently displace the more than two million people living in Gaza.
More than 700,000 Palestinians either fled or were expelled from their homes in what is now Israel during the war surrounding the creation of the state in 1948. Many of their descendants are now warning that the current war will end with a similar “nakba,” or catastrophe, as the 1948 migration is known in Arabic.
puppymama75 on November 6th, 2023 at 00:19 UTC »
I was just in Cairo. 25 million people, all of them hustling for the next dollar. 70% of the country is under 40. 1 million babies born in the first 231 days of last year in Egypt! Government frantically building entire neighborhoods of 15-storey apartment buildings. People living in illegal concrete brick apartments stacked precariously on top of each other Jenga-fashion with no internal support beams or windows. People living in their family crypts in the Muslim Necropolis because they have nowhere else.
It’s a messy, cheerful, chaotic, dusty, bustling place with more people selling more kinds of things in more ways than i have ever seen or could have even imagined. My takeaway was that Egypt is very, very busy being proud of and working hard to brag on its past, manage its present and build its future. Along with definitely being a police state, and always looking for an angle / turning a healthy profit. Any tourist who has survived a week in Cairo without being ripped off, hats off to you! I can’t even really be mad tho. They are so charming and fun while squeezing extra pounds from you. Lol.
But, here is the thing, WHAT in the EVER LIVING FUCK would Egypt POSSIBLY do with 2 million MORE people from one week to the next? - many of them injured, traumatized, hungry, penniless, and/or enraged…Germany took in a million Syrians over a year’s time, with enormous resources to support them and settle them, and it was still crazy difficult and fundamentally strained and changed the nation in ways that are still percolating.
Now, if as has been rumoured, Israel might pay their IMF debt in return for doing it? That might just work…
A_Lost_Desert_Rat on November 5th, 2023 at 21:23 UTC »
If all fairness Egypt controlled Gaza from 1948 to 1967 and did nothing for them then. Expecting them to do anything now seems unlikely.
green_flash on November 5th, 2023 at 19:39 UTC »
By "large numbers" they don't mean a few thousand by the way: