Color me skeptical, although not entirely dismissive — yet. With Israel’s renewed military operations in Gaza and Donald Trump’s threats to zero out the territory and start over, Egypt may have at least begun Plans B through Z when it comes to the militants that make their lives miserable.
A Lebanese news outlet reports that Abdel Fattah al-Sisi had broached the idea of temporarily relocating as many as 500,000 Gazans into the Sinai. The apparent idea would be to get other countries to do the same to drain Gaza of its civilian population so that Israel can annihilate Hamas and finally put an end to twenty years of war. But since the first rule of Relocation Club is ‘you don’t talk about Relocation Club,’ all sides deny that the topic came up:
Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi has informed other Arab leaders that he is willing to temporarily relocate half a million residents from Gaza to northern Sinai in a designated city as part of the reconstruction of the Gaza Strip, according to a Friday report.
According to the report in the Lebanese Al-Akhbar newspaper, Sissi made his willingness known during meetings held by Arab leaders in recent weeks in Saudi Arabia and Qatar. There was no confirmation of the report from any other source.
The Egyptian State Information Service denied the report, saying, “Egypt’s position is firm in its absolute and final rejection of any attempt to displace Palestinians, and the Cairo Arab Summit’s emergency plan for reconstruction is based on it.”
There are good reasons for the public refusal. The Arab nations want Israel to eventually create independent states for the Arab Palestinians in the occupied territories and Gaza, and have tried at various times to facilitate it. However, these same nations have grown tired of the Arab Palestinians’ refusal to take yes for an answer; Saudi Prince Bandar took the extraordinary step of going public with the true history of their refusals on Saudi television in 2020.
Of course, that’s not the only reason to refuse Palestinians refuge:
In public statements, Sissi and Jordan’s King Abdullah have repeatedly rebuffed US President Donald Trump’s assertion that the two Arab countries could take in Palestinian refugees on a permanent basis under his plan to empty the Gaza Strip of its residents and turn it into a “riviera.” The issue is of crucial significance for Jordan and Egypt, which fear that an influx of Palestinians will destabilize their countries.
The Jordanians have had real-life lessons on that point. They invited the PLO to relocate after losing a war with the Israelis in the West Bank area, and Yasser Arafat repaid them by attempting a coup to seize power in Amman. The Jordanians defeated them militarily and ejected them into Syria, where Hafez Assad had to fight them and eject them into Lebanon. Arafat and his henchmen then touched off a bloody civil war there that lasted for years and eventually paved the way for Hezbollah’s domination.
Hamas is another Iranian proxy that al-Sisi can do without, and the Gazans are too tied to Hamas to trust. The Sunni Arabs like to dress up their refusal to take in Palestinians with language about their self-determination in the territories they currently occupy, but in truth no one wants them because they can’t trust the Palestinians not to attack the hands that feed them. The adage “no good deed goes unpunished” was practically invented by Arafat and the PLO.
Plus, this seems like a strange time to offer relocation as a possibility. Donald Trump recently backtracked on his plan to eject the Palestinians from Gaza:
Later in March, Trump appeared to walk back on his plan, noting “nobody is expelling any Palestinians from Gaza” during a meeting with Irish Prime Minister Micheál Martin at the White House.
Egypt’s foreign ministry subsequently said it appreciated the US president’s statement on not calling for Gazans to leave.
So this is entirely nonsense, right? Maybe not. Israel’s signal today that it plans to start seizing Gaza territory if Hamas will not surrender may force the Arab nations to start planning for contingencies:
The IDF will permanently seize parts of the Gaza Strip if Hamas doesn’t release the hostages held in captivity, Defense Minister Israel Katz said on Friday.
“I have instructed the IDF to seize additional areas in Gaza, evacuate the population, and expand security zones around Gaza to protect Israeli communities and IDF soldiers. The more Hamas persists in its refusal to release the hostages, the more territory it will lose, which will be annexed to Israel,” Katz said.
“If the hostages are not released, Israel will continue to take more and more territory in the Strip for permanent control,” he concluded.
The IDF returned to offensive ground operations this week already. They reclaimed control of the Netzarim Corridor, which they had released in Phase One of the now-defunct operational pause in the war to trade hostages for prisoners. That has once again cut off northern Gaza from southern Gaza and interrupted line of communication between remaining Hamas forces. Whether or not Israel actually wants to seize this turf is another matter, but right now the point is to force a capitulation by escalating the consequences of defiance:
Israeli security analysts said the threat appeared to be a pressure tactic and unlikely to be carried out completely. “He’s basically telling Hamas: ‘You guys either release them, or I remove your people and build settlements in the strip,’” said Ahron Bregman, a political scientist with the Department of War Studies at King’s College London.
“It seems Israel is trying to find all kinds of leverage to squeeze Hamas to agree to a deal,” said Yoel Guzansky, a senior fellow at the Institute for National Security Studies, a think-tank based in Tel Aviv. “They’re trying to make up for some of what they gave Hamas earlier in order to get some of that leverage back.”
Given how Israel treated Gaza settlers in 2005, it seems doubtful that they’ll have many takers for that option unless the entire Palestinian population is ejected. Ariel Sharon abandoned Gaza in part because of the difficulties in providing security. But a full-scale ejection would mean the Israelis would “settle” the entire territory and eliminate those issues for good.
And that may be what Egypt has in mind, if they are actually floating these proposals. They may not ever adopt them, but just discussing such ideas might make it clear to Hamas and Qatar that they have had enough of the twenty-year war too, and are now willing to think outside the box to bring it to an end. Trump raised the stakes on defiance earlier, and Israel is now doing the same. If Egypt and Jordan start talking as though the expulsion option is legit, then suddenly the risks are much higher for the Gazans — and their choices much more constrained. Leverage is everything in this region, and this is a sign that it may be shifting more against the Palestinians than it has in 80 years.
