dpa
Cairo/Tel Aviv
Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah al-Sissi on Thursday rejected the displacement of Palestinians from the neighbouring Gaza Strip as Israel prepares for an impending military operation in Rafah.
Cairo is worried that a planned push into the southern border city of Rafah, the last remaining Hamas stronghold in Gaza after months of Israeli raids in the north and centre of the coastal strip, would trigger a mass exodus into Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula.
“Egypt has adopted a clear stance since the first minute [of the war] totally rejecting the forced migration of Palestinians from their lands to Sinai or any other place in order to preserve the Palestinian cause from liquidation and safeguard Egypt’s national security,” al-Sissi said in a televised address.
Israel launching an offensive on Rafah will have “catastrophic consequences” on the humanitarian situation in Gaza and on regional peace and security, according to an Egyptian presidential statement.
Egypt was the first Arab country to sign a peace treaty with Israel in 1979, but Israel’s Gaza military campaign has inflamed popular feelings in the world’s biggest Arab nation.
Rafah is the last holdout for hundreds of thousands of Palestinians fleeing the ongoing war between Israel and the Palestinian movement Hamas, triggered by the group’s October 7 attacks in Israel which killed over 1,200. Almost 35,000 Palestinians have died since.
An Israeli media report says tens of thousands of people have already left Rafah ahead of the looming Israeli offensive.
Some 150,000 to 200,000 Palestinian civilians have left Rafah since April 7, the Jerusalem Post reported on Thursday, citing the army.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) refused to comment.
An Israeli military operation in Rafah, which lies in the very south of the Gaza Strip and borders Egypt, will exacerbate the humanitarian crisis in the Palestinian enclave according to aid agencies.
