Israel admitted on Monday that one of its ministries had drawn up a war proposal to relocate the 2.3 million people from the Gaza Strip to Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, drawing condemnation from Palestinians and heightening tensions with Cairo.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office downplayed the report prepared by the Intelligence Ministry as a hypothetical exercise – a “concept paper.” But his conclusions reinforced long-standing Egyptian fears that Israel is seeking to make Gaza Egypt’s problem, and revived for Palestinians memories of their greatest trauma – the uprooting of hundreds of thousands of people who fled or fled their homes during the fighting over Israel Founded in 1948.
“We are against rendition to any location and in any form, and we consider it a red line that we will not allow to be crossed,” Nabil Abu Rudeineh, spokesman for Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, said of the transfer Report. “What happened in 1948 must not be repeated.”
A mass expulsion, Rudeineh said, would amount to “a new declaration of war.”
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The aim is to ensure Israel’s security
The document is dated October 13, six days after the Hamas attack. It was first published by Sicha Mekomit, a local news site.
In its report, the Intelligence Ministry — a subordinate ministry that conducts research but does not set policy — offered three alternatives “to bring about a significant change in the civilian reality in the Gaza Strip in light of the Hamas crimes that led to the Sword of Iron.” War” – using the IDF designation given to the war.
The document proposes moving Gaza’s civilian population to tent cities in northern Sinai and then establishing permanent cities and an undefined humanitarian corridor. A security zone would be established within Israel to prevent displaced Palestinians from entering. The report did not say what would become of Gaza if its population were cleared, but its authors consider that alternative to be the most desirable for Israel’s security.
Egypt’s Foreign Ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the report. But Egypt has made it clear in this latest war that it does not want to accept a wave of Palestinian refugees.
Israeli forces in the Gaza Strip are seen in this undated photo released by the IDF on October 30, 2023 (IDF spokesman)
Egypt has long feared that Israel wants to force a permanent expulsion of Palestinians into its territory, as happened during Israel’s war for independence. Egypt ruled Gaza between 1948 and 1967, when Israel captured the area along with the West Bank and East Jerusalem. The vast majority of Gaza’s population are descendants of Palestinian refugees expelled from what is now Israel.
Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sissi said a mass influx of refugees from Gaza would destroy the Palestinian nationalist cause. There is also a risk of militants entering Sinai, where they may launch attacks on Israel, he said. That would jeopardize the countries’ 1979 peace treaty. He suggested that Israel should instead house Palestinians in the Negev Desert, which borders the Gaza Strip, until it ends its military operations.
Yoel Guzansky, a senior fellow at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv, said the paper threatened to damage relations with a key partner.
“This is a serious mistake. It could create a strategic rift between Israel and Egypt,” said Guzansky, who said he has advised the ministry in the past. “I see it as either ignorance or someone who wants to negatively influence Israeli-Egyptian relations, which are very important at this stage.”
Egypt is a valuable partner that works with Israel behind the scenes, he said. Giving the impression that it openly supports an Israeli plan like this, particularly involving the Palestinians, could have “destructive consequences for its stability.”
Questions of legitimacy – and other possible goals
Egypt would not necessarily be the last stop for Palestinian refugees. The document states that Egypt, Turkey, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are supporting the plan either financially or by accepting uprooted Gazans as refugees and long-term citizens. Canada’s “lenient” immigration practices also make the country a potential relocation destination, the document continued.
At first glance, “this proposal could be complicated in terms of international legitimacy,” the document admits. “Our assessment is that fighting after the population is evacuated would result in fewer civilian casualties than would be expected if the population remained.”
Palestinians wait to enter Egypt at the Rafah border crossing in the Gaza Strip on October 16, 2023. (AP Photo/Fatima Shbair)
An Israeli official familiar with the document said it was not binding and that there had been no substantive discussion about it with security officials. Netanyahu’s office called it a “conceptual paper as developed at all levels of the government and its security agencies.”
“The issue of the ‘day after’ has not been discussed in any official forum in Israel, which is currently focused on destroying Hamas’s government and military capabilities,” the prime minister’s office said.
The document rejects the other two options: reinstating the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority as sovereign in Gaza or supporting a local regime. She rejects them, among other things, because they are unable to deter attacks on Israel.
Reinstating the Palestinian Authority, which was expelled from Gaza after a week-long war with Hamas, which came to power in 2007, would be “an unprecedented victory for the Palestinian national movement, a victory that will claim the lives of thousands of Israeli civilians and soldiers.” , and does not ensure the security of Israel,” the document says.
Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh said in a newspaper interview that the Palestinian Authority would only agree to the takeover of Gaza as part of a broader peace initiative to create a Palestinian state.
Lobbying in Egypt to accept refugees
Despite Netanyahu’s office downgrading the paper, the Financial Times reported on Monday that the prime minister had tried to persuade European leaders to pressure Egypt to accept refugees.
Officials from the Czech Republic and Austria floated the idea at a meeting of European leaders last week, but officials from France, Germany and the United Kingdom quickly rejected the proposal as unrealistic given Egypt’s public opposition to accepting refugees.
Israel has refused to publicly promise that refugees will be allowed to return to Gaza if they leave the Strip, sharpening Cairo’s stance on the idea, an Arab diplomat told the Times of Israel last week.
The Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza said more than 8,300 people were killed in the war, including many children. The figures released by the terror group cannot be independently verified and are believed to include its own members killed in Gaza and Israel, as well as victims of what Israel says were hundreds of misguided Palestinian rockets aimed at and within Israel have landed in the Gaza Strip since the war began.
Israeli soldiers remove bodies of Israeli civilians at Kibbutz Kfar Aza, near the Israel-Gaza border, southern Israel, October 10, 2023. (Chaim Goldberg/Flash90)
The current war broke out on October 7 after around 2,500 Hamas and other terrorists stormed the Gaza border in a multi-pronged attack, killing over 1,400 people, most of them civilians, slaughtered in their homes and at an outdoor music festival became.
The terrorists also kidnapped over 230 people to Gaza. The prisoners, also mostly civilians, include women, the elderly and children, some of whom are still in diapers.
Israel has vowed to destroy Hamas and remove it from power. The IDF has carried out intensive attacks on Gaza and troops have entered the Palestinian enclave ahead of an expected major ground operation. Israel says it is committed to minimizing civilian casualties and has ordered Palestinians in northern Gaza to evacuate Gaza and move south. According to the IDF, around 700,000 people of the estimated 1.1 million residents of the northern Gaza Strip were evacuated south.
Hamas-led terrorist groups continue to bombard southern and central Israel with rocket fire, causing more deaths and injuries. There was also sporadic rocket fire from the Lebanese terrorist group Hezbollah and its allies in the north. Over 200,000 people in Israel have been driven from their homes.