It appears unlikely that Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi will be able to absorb the 2.2 million Palestinians who could be displaced from the Gaza Strip during the war between Israel and Hamas, experts have told Al Jazeera.
“My assessment is that it’s 95 percent a failure,” said Nancy Okail, president and CEO of the Center for International Policy, a progressive nonprofit based in Washington, DC.
“The political cost outweighs any benefits,” she added, highlighting the potential for domestic unrest in Egypt if an influx of Palestinian refugees were to arrive.
But the prospect of mass displacement from Gaza – a narrow, densely populated territory on Egypt’s northeastern border – has increased the concerns of Al-Sisi’s government.
On October 24, +972 magazine and its sister publication Local Call reported a leaked document purportedly from the Israeli Intelligence Ministry, describing a proposal to “evacuate” all Palestinians from Gaza to Egypt .
There are also rumors that Israeli leaders are trying to get Cairo to accept displaced Palestinians by offering to cancel part of its bloated foreign debt, which hovers around $160 billion.
Additionally, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has reportedly been pressuring European leaders to help convince El-Sisi to welcome refugees from Gaza – an idea he has so far rejected.
“It is completely understandable that Egyptians and Palestinians fear that Israeli leaders would seek to forcibly and permanently displace Palestinians from Gaza,” said Timothy Kaldas, an expert on Egyptian political economy for the Tahrir Institute for Policy at the Middle East.
He added that Palestinians should always have the right to seek asylum in neighboring countries, a protection denied to them by Egypt and Israel.
“Palestinians should always have the choice – and I emphasize this choice – to settle in Sinai and seek refuge. They should not be subjected to indiscriminate bombing in Gaza,” Kaldas told Al Jazeera.
A high “political cost”
A majority of Palestinians were expelled from their homeland in 1948 during the creation of the state of Israel – an event they call the Nakba, or “catastrophe.”
Most people in Gaza today are the children or grandchildren of those displaced during the Nakba. They now risk being permanently uprooted again, which constitutes a war crime under international law.
The issue of Palestinian rights has always been a popular cause in Egypt, according to Okail. If El-Sissi gives in to pressure to absorb Gaza’s population, he could spark widespread outrage and protests.
“The political cost (of helping move Palestinians) could be el-Sissi’s presidency,” Okail told Al Jazeera.
Such a move, Okail said, would likely be interpreted as helping Israel expand and consolidate its occupation of the Palestinian territories. Any resulting unrest could prompt the military to overthrow Sisi in order to restore order, she added.
“Any expression of dissent in the public domain in Egypt will be extremely sensitive for the military,” Okail said. Its members “are known to be completely opposed to the idea of allowing Palestinians to be expelled from their lands and enter (Egypt).”
Security dilemma
El-Sisi also expressed concerns that accepting refugees from Gaza could encourage Palestinian fighters to put down roots in Egypt.
In a meeting with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz on October 18, el-Sisi argued that Palestinians displaced to Egypt’s Sinai region could establish a “new base” to carry out “terrorist operations.”
“Israel would have the right to defend itself and its national security and therefore directly strike Egyptian lands,” el-Sissi said.
This scenario threatens to upend the peace agreement between Egypt and Israel, negotiated by the United States at the Camp David summit in 1978.
Kaldas believes El-Sisi’s security fears are legitimate. He added that Egypt is probably more concerned about the arrival of small armed groups than Hamas, the Palestinian organization whose surprise attack on Israel helped spark the current war.
“That doesn’t mean they don’t worry about Hamas, but they have a clearer and more direct relationship with the group,” Kaldas told Al Jazeera.
Since 2016, relations between Egypt and Hamas have thawed. The two sides initially cooperated to suppress ISIL (ISIS) group cells. Egypt later took over mediation for ceasefires between Hamas and Israel – a role that restored some of El-Sisi’s regional influence.
But Al-Sissi’s government remains wary of Hamas because of its heavy military arsenal and its affiliation with the Muslim Brotherhood, a group it vilified and repressed to consolidate power in Egypt.
Additionally, el-Sissi may believe that the arrival of Palestinian armed groups could encourage young people, disenfranchised by Egypt’s economic crisis, to join their ranks, according to Okail.
“Many of these people frankly have nothing to lose and might be tempted to join us,” she told Al Jazeera.
An opportunity under pressure
Although Al-Sisi has so far resisted calls to accept Gaza’s displaced populations, some experts believe the Egyptian president is nevertheless using the situation to his advantage.
Hossam Bahgat, founder of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR), told Al Jazeera that el-Sissi’s government is using Western support for Israel to claim that it would be hypocritical to criticize human rights violations. man in Egypt.
“Pro-regime figures on social media point out that all the Western talk about human rights over the past decade – all the monitoring and conditioning of military aid by the US Congress – was just “part of a Western conspiracy to weaken the state,” Bahgat said. Al Jazeera.
Countries like the United States have documented “credible reports” of human rights violations in Egypt, including torture, extrajudicial killings and enforced disappearances. El-Sisi’s government, however, denied these accusations.
But Bahgat said the pressure some countries are putting on Egypt to eventually allow the forced displacement of Palestinians – a serious crime – will give El-Sissi greater cover to commit human rights violations domestically. .
“The regime won’t even have to worry about its image,” Bahgat said.