Alexandra Ferguson
(CNN) – Egypt is increasing its security presence on the Gaza border, fearing that Israel's war against Hamas could spill into its territory if the Israeli army begins its ground attack on Rafah, the enclave's southernmost city, where more than Half of Gaza's population is fleeing just a few steps from the border.
Fortifying the Gaza border is a “precautionary measure” in light of an expected Israeli ground operation in Rafah, Egyptian security officials told CNN. As part of its security strengthening, Egypt has deployed more troops and aircraft in northern Sinai on the border with Gaza.
According to satellite images, Egypt is building a new walled buffer zone more than three kilometers wide on the border with Gaza
Israel's military operation in Gaza could jeopardize its nearly half-century-old relationship with a key Arab partner. Egypt had previously condemned Israel's move to push Palestinians out of the enclave, saying it was part of a plan to drive out Gazans and would mean the end of the Palestinian cause.
Now it is sounding the alarm again as Israel pushes more than a million Palestinians into its territory and prepares for a military operation in Rafah.
New satellite images show that Egypt also appears to be building a huge buffer zone and a wall several kilometers wide along its border with the southern Gaza Strip. Images taken this week by Maxar Technologies show that a significant portion of Egyptian territory between a highway and the Gaza border has been destroyed. At the border itself, several cranes can be seen placing parts of the wall.
Other satellite images reviewed by CNN show that excavators arrived at the site on February 3 and that initial excavation work in the safety zone began on February 6. Excavations have increased significantly this week.
CNN has reached out to the Egyptian government for comment on the security zone and construction of the wall.
Checkpoints at the Rafah border crossing on the Egyptian side have been reinforced with more soldiers and areas around the main road have been prepared for the deployment of tanks and military machinery, an eyewitness told CNN.
Egyptian military helicopters were also seen flying on the Egyptian side this week, according to an eyewitness in Egypt and videos captured on social media from the Gaza side of the border.
Egyptian army soldiers watch from behind the barbed wire border fence as Palestinian workers unload boxes of humanitarian aid entering Gaza through the Kerem Shalom (Karm Abu Salem) border crossing in the south of the enclave, January 29. Photo credit: Khatib/AFP/Getty Images Egyptian and Israeli officials rarely criticize each other in public, but Egypt's Foreign Ministry spokesman on Monday criticized comments by far-right Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, saying Cairo bore significant responsibility for the Oct. 7 incident Hamas attacks against Israel in which 1,200 people were killed and more than 250 were kidnapped. According to the Hamas-run Health Ministry, Israel's subsequent military action in the Gaza Strip killed more than 28,000 people there.
It is “regrettable and shameful” that Smotrich “continues to make irresponsible and inflammatory statements that only reveal a desire to kill and destroy,” the Egyptian spokesman said on X, formerly Twitter.
Egypt was the first Arab nation to recognize Israel in 1979. The two signed a historic pact in which Israel returned the Sinai Peninsula, which it had taken from it in the 1967 war, to Egypt in return for peace. The treaty also limited the number of troops stationed on the Egypt-Gaza border, then controlled by Israel. The treaty made Egypt a pariah in the Arab world, but decades later it paved the way for other Arab nations to sign similar agreements with Israel.
One family was evacuated from the northern Gaza Strip, the other was not. Now they are in the same hospital in Egypt
Western media, including the Associated Press and The New York Times, have reported that Egypt has threatened to abandon the peace deal if Israeli troops enter Rafah. Egypt's foreign minister denied that report, but said at a news conference on Monday that Cairo would abide by the deal “as long as it is reciprocal,” the state-run Ahram newspaper reported.
A satellite image from Maxar Technologies shows Rafah, Gaza, on February 3. Photo credit: Maxar Technologies
An Israeli official admitted that the Egyptians were concerned about the Israeli operation but said they were not aware of any specific threat related to the treaty. “There is cooperation between the Israeli and Egyptian security forces. “This has always existed and always will,” the Israeli official told CNN.
Emad Gad, a consultant at the Cairo-based Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies and a former member of the Egyptian parliament, said Egypt's suspension of the treaty was “totally unrealistic.”
The move, he told CNN, would have consequences for the United States, including for the significant financial and military aid Egypt receives from Washington.
“The current crisis poses potential dangers not seen in previous incidents,” said Ofir Winter, senior researcher at the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) in Tel Aviv and professor at the Department of Arabic and Islamic Studies at Tel Aviv University.
Although Egypt and Israel have endured difficult times since the treaty was signed, this is the worst period in Israeli-Egyptian relations since ruler Abdel Fattah el-Sisi came to power a decade ago, Winter told CNN.
Israel is under pressure from the international community to refrain from a ground operation in Rafah, which has been subjected to Israeli air strikes for weeks. The city is the last major refuge for Palestinians fleeing the northern and central Gaza Strip.
Palestinians crowd the streets of Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip on February 10. Photo credit: Abed Zagout/Anadolu/Getty Images
After numerous Israeli calls to evacuate other areas of the enclave, more than 1.3 million people are now crammed into a sprawling tent city in Rafah.
Families struggling with food, water and medicine shortages live in tents just meters from the barbed wire fence that separates them from Egypt.
Several Israeli cabinet ministers, including far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir and Finance Minister Smotrich, publicly called for the resettlement of Jews in Gaza after the war. Although Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has rejected the idea of rebuilding settlements in Gaza, he said Israel would retain “full control over security.”
The US warns Israel against re-occupying Gaza, while Netanyahu hints at what the enclave would look like after the war
Refugee overflow
Egypt's Foreign Ministry warned on Sunday of the “serious consequences” of an Israeli military operation in Rafah and called on Israel to “refrain from actions that would further complicate the situation and invariably harm the interests of all parties involved.”
For Egypt, the prospect of millions of Palestinians entering the country brings back memories of the 2008 border crisis, when hundreds of Gazans rushed into Egypt after the border wall was blown up and torn down. Palestinians ran out of fuel, food and other supplies after Israel closed border crossings with the Gaza Strip.
Egypt said the Rafah border crossing had been bombed on the Palestinian side at least four times since the war began. In October, Egypt blocked the passage gates with concrete slabs.
Egypt's foreign ministry spokesman said on Wednesday that “targeting this area of the enclave, where so many civilians are present, poses a danger.”
“This is completely different than if these citizens lived in a larger or more extensive area,” Egyptian Foreign Ministry spokesman Ahmed Abu Zeid said in an interview with Alghad TV. “We are talking about an area in the south of the Gaza Strip where 300,000 Palestinians used to live,” Abu Zeid said, adding that more than a million people now live there.
Children stand next to tents sheltering displaced Palestinians who have fled their homes due to Israeli attacks in Rafah, southern Gaza Strip, on January 26. Photo credit: Ibraheem Abu Mustafa/Portal
Cross a neutral demilitarized zone
The Egyptian official wanted to highlight the dangers of Israel's ground offensive across the Philadelphia route, a 14-kilometer-long and 100-meter-wide strip of land on the Gaza-Egypt border.
The Thin Line is a neutral zone on the Egypt-Gaza border established under the 1979 peace treaty. It is part of a larger series of zones that Israel and Egypt have agreed to demilitarize. Neither state can increase its military presence there without the other's prior consent.
After the withdrawal from Gaza in 2005, Israel agreed with Egypt on a mechanism to secure the area, with only Egyptian border patrol forces stationed on the Egyptian side of the border. Experts say recent Egyptian operations in the region could constitute a violation of that agreement unless they are carried out with Israel's tacit approval.
Egypt's role in the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas
In increasing its security presence on the Gaza border, Egypt says it is acting under a 2016 agreement with Israel to reinforce forces in so-called Area C in the Sinai, adjacent to the Israeli border, another Egyptian official said . to CNN. That 2016 agreement came at a time when Egypt was battling a radical insurgency.
The increased security measures on the Egyptian side are technically not in line with both countries' security agreements, but are likely being carried out with Israel's blessing, Gad said.
“It appears that this is a step approved by Israel to calm Egypt’s fears,” Gad said. “Egypt would not deploy (more forces) without Israel’s consent.”
Gad said an Israeli ground attack in Rafah itself would not constitute a violation of the treaty, but an operation on the Philadelphia route would.
The deployment of Israeli troops on the Philadelphia route without prior agreement between the two countries would be a violation of the peace treaty, the Egyptian official told CNN, adding that the government had not agreed to such a deployment. Winter said that if Israel conducts military operations in Rafah involving more than the four infantry battalions allowed under the agreement, Egypt could claim a violation of the agreement.
It is unclear whether Israel and Egypt are discussing the possible deployment in Rafah. While Israeli media previously reported some level of coordination, Al Qahera News, which is affiliated with the Egyptian government, said last month that Egypt had rejected reports claiming security coordination between Israel and Egypt on the Philadelphia route.
Al-Ahram Center's Gad said there are “undoubtedly and absolutely security talks” between Israel and Egypt, adding that whenever political tensions arose, security apparatuses intervened to calm the situation.
These conversations, he said, are often denied by officials to appease public opinion.
Although relations between Israel and Egypt have not been this heated in years, they are mostly focused on “the level of official statements,” he said. “On a practical, security and military level, relations are stable.”
— CNN's Lauren Izso and Paul P. Murphy contributed to this report.
The CNN Wire
™ & © 2024 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery company. All rights reserved.