CAIRO — The first evacuation orders came in late October, urging residents in northern Gaza to head south to avoid impending Israeli attacks around Gaza City. Since then, each new day has seemed to bring another, sometimes contradictory warning from Israeli forces for civilians in Gaza to move from a neighborhood or town or region that would be targeted.
It’s become increasingly clear that the evacuation order Israelis ultimately are issuing is for the 2.3 million people of Gaza to leave the coastal enclave altogether. There’s no clearer indication of that than the current death toll of more than 18,000 who have been killed in the past two months in Gaza, which includes two-thirds who are women and children.
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And yet as desperate as families are to find safety from the bombings and military clashes, the question of where to go is a very loaded one for Palestinians. There is a deep-seated fear of being forced to leave their homeland, like the some 700,000 Palestinians who were violently expelled or forced to flee their homes and native villages in 1948 in what has become known as the Nakba, or “catastrophe.”
Israeli government and military officials have made no secret of their aim to empty Gaza of civilians, saying that would allow them to better be able to hunt down Hamas fighters without additional casualties.
Israel has pushed their Western allies to pressure Egypt to take them in Sinai Peninsula, before developing their proposal to call for Western nations to host Gaza’s Palestinians.
A terrifying situation
A leaked document from Israel’s Ministry of Intelligence, dated Oct. 13, outlines a proposal to forcibly and permanently transfer Gaza’s Palestinians to Sinai.
“The messages should revolve around the loss of land, making it clear that there is no hope of returning to the territories Israel will soon occupy, whether or not that is true,” reads the document.
Israeli and Western officials sought to capitalize on Egypt’s economic crisis. The Arab world’s most populous country has seen its debt balloon and its currency plummet, adding further burdens to its 105 million people.
Israel has forced about 1.9 million people to flee their homes since the beginning of the war
Palestinian rights activist Moustafa Ibrahim, who lives in the town of Rafah on the Egyptian border, said Palestinians have been under heavy pressure that includes relentless killing and destruction to push them towards Egypt.
But Israel’s “crimes and revenge” have given Palestinians “the strength to be patient and steadfast,” Ibrahim said. “But how long will this terrifying situation remain as it is?”
Israel has forced about 1.9 million people to flee their homes since the beginning of the war. Most of the displaced people are from the northern half of the strip, but also from the southern areas, including Rafah, which Israel had previously said was safe.
This is the largest forced displacement of Palestinians since 1948, according to Philippe Lazzarini, commissioner general of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, UNRWA.
Palestinian refugees to Europe and U.S.?
“The developments we are witnessing point to attempts to move Palestinians into Egypt, regardless of whether they stay there or are resettled elsewhere,” Lazzarini wrote Saturday in Los Angeles Times.
Israeli officials then developed the idea. They called countries around the world, including Europe and the U.S., asking them to receive Palestinians. Other officials called for Palestinians to be relocated in Western countries, as two members of the Israeli Knesset wrote in an opinion article in the Wall Street Journal.
“I welcome the initiative of voluntary relocation of Gazan Arabs to countries worldwide,” said Israel’s far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich. “This is the right humanitarian solution for the residents of Gaza and the whole area after 75 years of being poor refugees.”
Lebanese political analyst Ali Chendeb said that the forced transfer of Palestinians to Sinai has been an old Israeli project that is being revived.
“But this time with fire and destruction, and not as a negotiating offer that Egypt has repeatedly rejected,” he said in an op-ed published Monday in the Lebanese media Ourouba22.
Red lines in Egypt and Jordan
Having witnessed the experience of Jordan and Lebanon in hosting Palestinian refugees, Egypt has been firm in its rejection to Israel’s attempt and pressure from Western countries to take in Gaza residents.
President Abdel Fatah el-Sisi of Egypt warned in late October that pushing the Palestinians out of Gaza could lead to “the liquidation of the Palestinian cause.”
“Egypt will not accept forced displacement that leads to the liquidation of the Palestinian cause”
Defense Minister Ge. Mahamed Zaki echoed the same message last week. “The Palestinian cause is facing an extremely dangerous and sensitive curve, and an uncalculated military escalation to impose a reality on the ground aimed at liquidating the cause, which Cairo rejects,” he said.
Egyptian officials went further and warned that forcing Palestinians to Sinai would jeopardize Egypt’s 40-year-old peace with Israel. Egypt was the first Arab nation to have a peace deal with Israel in 1979.
“Egypt will not accept forced displacement that leads to the liquidation of the Palestinian cause,” said pro-government lawmaker Moustafa Bakery on X (Twitter), adding that Cairo has threatened to cut ties with Israel. “The situation is very tense.”
Jordan, which shares a border with the occupied West Bank and took most of the Palestinians who fled or were driven from their homes during the Nakba in 1948, has also warned against Palestinians being forced off their land.
King Abdullah II said Monday in a meeting with top military officials said such attempts aim to liquidate the Palestinian cause. He repeated his warnings that such transfer is a “red line” for Jordan as well.
The Negev solution
To counter Israel’s attempt to force the Palestinians into Sinai, the Egyptian president used a news conference in Cairo in October with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, proposing southern Israel as an area to host Palestinian refugees.
“If there is an idea to transfer (the Palestinians), there’s the Negev Desert in Israel.” el-Sisi said. “It’s possible to move the Palestinians until Israel ends its announced task of ending the resistance of the armed groups.”
The Negev Desert is an arid region in the southern part of Israel, with the city of Beer Sheva at its northern tip and the resort town of Eilat at the southern end. It borders Jordan in the east and Egypt in the west.
The desert houses many Israeli cities, towns, and kibbutzim. The Negev is also where you find the town of Dimona, where Israel’s undeclared nuclear weapons are believed to be held.
Israel has made a point of not commenting on el-Sisi’s Negev proposal. But it has also clearly not relented in pushing the people of Gaza southward, towards areas on the Egyptian borders.
Meanwhile, Cairo has deployed thousands of troops across the Sinai, ready to fend off any attempt to breach its border.
