Egypt: We will not allow Gazans in to escape war zone

Displacing the population would be a national security problem and “the end of the Palestinian cause,” Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty explained to CNN.

By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News

Egypt firmly nixed Monday the idea of allowing Gazan civilians into the country to escape the upcoming IDF offensive into Gaza City, which will displace up to a million residents.

In an interview with CNN, Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty noted two major reasons for Cairo refusing to let Gazans leave through the only border open to them, at Rafah in the southern tip of the Strip.

“Any kind of displacement would be a big risk, and we will not allow any single party to risk our national security and our sovereignty … in our border,” he said.

The Egyptians are seemingly suspicious that many, if not most, of the refugees fleeing the war could be Hamas supporters if not outright members.

Hamas is an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, a movement outlawed in Egypt for its terrorist activities in support of turning the country into an Islamic caliphate.

Abdelatty also said that if Gazans left en masse, it was certain to become a “one-way ticket” and “the end of the Palestinian cause” of having an independent state.

“Displacement is a red line,” he said. “We will not accept it, we will not participate in it, and we will not allow it to happen.”

The foreign minister did not explain why he thought it would be impossible to repatriate Gazan refugees after the Hamas-Israel war ended.

He also claimed that “There is no moral, ethical or legal or political reason for that.”

Military experts such as John Spencer, chair of the urban warfare studies at West Point, have pointed out that allowing civilians to save their lives by escaping a war zone has been accepted humanitarian practice for decades, noting, for example, the millions of Ukrainians who were given asylum in neighboring countries following the Russian invasion of their country in 2022.

History has shown that when wars end, most refugees return to their homelands.

In February, U.S. President Donald Trump had floated the idea of finding countries to take in the Gazan population willing to leave.

In this way, the territory could more easily be cleared of unexploded ordnance and the masses of buildings destroyed in the war could be rebuilt and turned into a Gazan “Riviera” under American and allied Arab auspices.

While Israel’s government enthusiastically endorsed the idea, no country has stepped forward to take in more than a few thousand Gazans, mostly either injured civilians and their families or workers.

Very few countries have done even that, despite global criticism that Israel is causing disproportionate suffering in the ongoing war sparked by the Hamas-led invasion of Oct. 7, 2023, when some 6,000 terrorists broke through the Gazan border, massacred 1,200 Israelis and foreign nationals, and took 251 hostages.

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