Egypt Building a Large Internment Camp For Rafah's Refugees
In a policy reversal, it seems Israel has called Sisi's bluff and the United States has pressed him to facilitate ethnic cleansing of Gaza
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The Egyptian government seems to have made a stunning reversal of policy regarding Palestinians in Gaza. Reports indicate that they are constructing a small, enclosed area along the border with Gaza. They are bulldozing existing buildings, flattening the area in apparent preparation for paving it, and building a seven-meter-high wall to encircle the area.
From all appearances, Egypt would seem to be preparing to take in a large number of refugees from Gaza, something their president, Abdel Fattah El-Sisi (whom, we must remind U.S. President Joe Biden is indeed the president of Egypt, not of Mexico) had adamantly refused to do until now.
Sisi faces a real dilemma. He has every reason not to be seen as facilitating the ethnic cleansing of Gaza. He made his stand with his refusal to let Israel push the people of Gaza into Sinai, but Benjamin Netanyahu called his bluff.
Israel clearly intends to move ahead with its planned invasion of Rafah, an area encompassing a city, a camp, and two small towns which had a population of roughly 267,000 people. It has now taken in over a million refugees from northern and central Gaza, and this is where Netanyahu plans to pour hundreds of Israeli troops, with tanks, artillery, and air cover. That’s not just shooting fish in a barrel, it’s shooting them in a barrel so stuffed with fish there is no room for water.
Earlier this week, Israel laughably said that before it invades Rafah it would come up with a plan to get civilians out of harm’s way. But since we already heard the ostensibly “moderate” Israeli President Isaac Herzog say that there are no innocent civilians in Gaza, a view reflected in Israel’s actions since October 7, we can see why no such plan has been forthcoming.
The question on everyone’s mind as the invasion of Rafah began looming was where would people go? The northern and central areas of Gaza are desolate, turned to rubble by Israeli bombs.
Seeing this coming, Sisi has been fortifying Egypt’s military force on the border with Gaza, and it has been difficult for those people who have, in their desperation, tried to cross into Sinai. But with what Israel is threatening to do now, it is inconceivable that there would not be a massive press at the border, hundreds of thousands of terrified, starving people banging at the proverbial door, pleading to get out as Israeli artillery and bombs explode and destroy everything behind them.
So, Sisi is building his complex, and shipping tents to it to be assembled once the concrete has hardened to pavement and the wall around it is erected. He is building a cage to hold Palestinians in. He does not want them in Egypt, as Egypt has never wanted Palestinians there (the Strip was partitioned off from Egypt by Gamal Abdel Nasser during the period from 1948-1967 when Egypt occupied it). But neither does he want to be seen as the leader who would not let them escape when Israel came to finish them off.
The work on this tent city prison seems to have started on February 5, just as U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken was heading to Cairo to meet with Sisi. The timing hardly seems coincidental. Surely the Biden administration did not want to be seen as responsible for a massacre that would make the last four months look like a rehearsal for this main event. The slaughter that would be inevitable if the people in Rafah couldn’t flee would be shocking to all but Israel’s most bloodthirsty supporters and, while that group would surely include Joe Biden and Blinken, it would not encompass most of their voters.
United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator Martin Griffiths told reporters on Thursday, ““The possibility of a military operation in Rafah, with the possibility of the [border] crossing closing down, with the possibility of spillover… a sort of Egyptian nightmare …is one that is right before our eyes.”
Griffiths added that the notion of a safe place to flee to was “an illusion.” So, Egypt has built its internment camp. Some may argue that the tent city in Sinai won’t be that much different from the one so many Palestinians are living in in Rafah now. But there is a key difference.
The tents in Rafah are in Gaza, they are in Palestine. There is no reason to believe that if people leave Gaza they will ever be able to come back. That is the risk some have already taken. Some with the means and the capability to get out have risked being unable to return to save their lives and the lives of their families.
But how many might be forced, literally under fire, to flee to Sinai now? It could well be a number in the hundreds of thousands. And if they leave we can rest assured that there will be self-righteous words from Washington, from Cairo, from Brussels about how those who fled “wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbors should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date.”
That last bit of quoted text is, of course, from UN General Assembly Resolution 194, dated December 11, 1948. 75 years later, we can see what the self-righteous words of other countries mean.
There is only one alternative to an event that will mercilessly compound decades of Palestinian suffering, topping off what has already been the most horrific event for Palestinians since the Nakba itself. It is a unified world emphatically saying “NO” to Israel, imposing real penalties, ending arms supplies, and demanding that it cease immediately its barbarism.
This should be an obvious step. That it isn’t is a mark of our collective lack of humanity and represents a moment that history will look back on and chastise us all for. If the readers of that history can stop weeping long enough to do so.
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