“Israeli Foreign Affairs Minister Israel Katz said it was up to Egypt to open the Rafah crossing, going as far as saying he addressed that need with some of his European counterparts. “The key to preventing a humanitarian crisis in Gaza is now in the hands of our Egyptian friends,” Katz said in comments released by his office.
That did not sit well with Egyptian foreign ministry officials, who issued a statement decrying “the desperate attempts of the Israeli side to hold Egypt responsible for the unprecedented humanitarian crisis facing the Gaza Strip,” and adding, “The foreign minister called on Israel to fulfil its legal responsibility as the occupying power, by allowing aid to enter through the land ports under its control.”
Though it worries about a large influx of Palestinians fleeing the violence, Egypt has maintained its side of the crossing has been open since the war started.”
https://www.yahoo.com/news/israel-presses-further-besieged-rafah-141156263.html
“What’s noteworthy in this entire conflict since Oct. 7 has been the lack of reaction or response from the Arab world. Saudi Arabia continues to hold the door open for a peace agreement with Israel. The UAE, Morocco and Bahrain didn’t even withdraw ambassadors. Jordan did, but of course with about half of its population being Palestinian, Jordan has a particular problem. That lack of reaction I think is very telling. If you needed another example that Arab states are not viscerally concerned about the Palestinians and their fate, this would be it.”
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“The 1967 war and emergence of the PLO as the “sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people” was a watershed moment. Prior to that, the Palestinians in political terms were effectively a function of other Arab states and Arab militaries. You had the PLA, the Palestine Liberation Army, that was under command of other Arab states — Jordan and Syria in particular. So in a sense, you went from, say, 1947 and 1948 to 1967 without an independent Palestinian voice.
The trauma of ’67 changed that, where the PLO did emerge as the voice of the Palestinians. And what reaction did you get from the other Arabs? Fear and loathing. The 1967 war forced hundreds of thousands of Palestinians into exile following their brethren from the ’48 war [over the founding of Israel]. Many of them wound up in Lebanon and Jordan. And in Lebanon they emerged as an entity that was increasingly independent of any Lebanese government control. … In 1969, the Cairo accords effectively gave the Palestinians under the PLO virtual autonomy in areas where they were settled. They ran the camps and increasingly ran south Lebanon, and that of course was a precipitating factor for the 1982 Israeli invasion.
But getting back to the main point: The last thing the Arab states, particularly those around Palestine and Israel, wanted to see was an independent Palestinian movement, let alone a state.”
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“The 1967 war brought two dramatic changes: It ended dreams of the conquest of Israel by force of arms, and it gave rise to the PLO as a somewhat independent force.”
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“Black September, the 1970 PLO effort to overthrow the Jordanian monarchy. That failed not just because of the prowess of the Jordanian military but also because the Syrians withheld the air support for the Palestinians they had promised, and that allowed the Jordanians to win the day. That Syrian air force was under command of a general named Hafez al-Assad [later ruler of Syria], whose hatred and fear of all things Palestinian was intense.
That was one of the many ironies of the Israeli invasion in 1982, in that Israel did serious work for Syria in dismantling the PLO structures in Lebanon and forcing the PLO to evacuate from Beirut.”
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“secular Palestinian nationalism. But even that was seen as an existential threat to both Jordan and Syria. For both countries, the PLO was a threat that they dealt with in different ways, but for both it was their top national security concern. Everything else was secondary. I don’t think we grasped that in the case of Syria.
The so-called Arab street [a term for public opinion in the Arab world] was behind the Palestinian cause, but it never really affected policy on part of any of the Arab governments. As you go around the region almost all [the Arab governments] were united on one point, which was that the Palestinians were a threat, a foreign population that should be weakened if not exterminated.
In Syria, you had the orchestration of a campaign against the PLO, and in Jordan, and the same in Egypt. It is noteworthy there is no Palestinian population in Egypt. Going back to the days of [former Egyptian leader] Gamal Abdel Nasser, the Egyptians saw the threat. Again, the Palestinians contributed to their isolation through some spectacular acts like the assassination of a Jordanian prime minister in front of the Sheraton hotel in broad daylight in Cairo by two Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine [PLPF] gunmen, one of whom stooped down to drink the assassinated prime minister’s blood.”
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/02/21/why-arab-states-wont-support-palestinians-qa-00142277
““Hamas comes directly out of the Muslim Brotherhood” in Gaza, “not a spinoff or anything like that. It is the Muslim Brotherhood,” Byman said.
For nearly 40 years, the Muslim Brotherhood in Gaza, which became Hamas, didn’t have sufficient power to be a threat to Egypt; they didn’t even participate in the First Intifada, or Palestinian uprising, Byman said. But when Hamas gained that power during its takeover of Gaza in 2007, former Egyptian autocrat Hosni Mubarak called the situation a “coup against legitimacy” and supported Israel’s blockade against Gaza. Mubarak was deposed during the Arab Spring, and Egyptians elected Mohammed Morsi, who was affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood and hoped to expand relations with Gaza.
Morsi served only a year and four days before he was deposed by Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, Egypt’s current strongman president. Sisi has heavily suppressed the Muslim Brotherhood and has in the past vilified Hamas and its connection with the Brotherhood. But he has also coordinated with the group against an Islamic State insurgency in the Sinai, supported relief efforts in Gaza, and mediated ceasefires between Israel and Hamas in previous rounds of conflict. That mediating role also strengthens the US’s reliance on Egypt and Sisi.
Still, Egypt’s security concerns are not unfounded; Hamas built several multipurpose tunnels connecting Gaza and Egypt. Those tunnels helped Hamas circumvent the blockade and smuggle in vital supplies like food, medicine, fuel, and construction materials. They are also used to store weapons caches and hide Hamas fighters, and they are difficult to target and destroy. Hamas has also used them to smuggle weapons and perpetrate cross-border raids and kidnappings.”
https://www.vox.com/2023/10/15/23918218/israel-hamas-war-egypt-humanitarian-crisis-gaza-israel-palestine-rafah-crossing
“Europe should take in the one million people trying to flee Gaza if it cares “about human rights so much”, a senior Egyptian official reportedly told a European counterpart.
“You want us to take one million people? Well, I am going to send them to Europe. You care about human rights so much – well, you take them,” the unidentified official said.
The rebuke, first reported by the Financial Times, came as media reports suggested that the Egyptian government was categorically refusing to accept the resettlement of Palestinian refugees in northern Sinai.
To avoid a mass exodus from the Gaza Strip into Egypt, the Egyptian army has begun setting up new positions close to the border, reinforcing the wall with barbed wire, expanding patrols in the area, and installing a concrete wall at the Rafah crossing with Gaza.”
https://www.yahoo.com/news/egyptian-official-says-europe-1-143224123.html
“The restrictions have mostly been about security concerns in North Sinai where the Egyptian authorities have long been involved in a deadly conflict with jihadists linked to Al Qaeda.
But Egypt’s current reluctance to open the crossing without clear conditions and guarantees may be more about trying to avoid a mass exodus of Palestinians from Gaza.
The UN’s humanitarian chief, Martin Griffiths, says the Egyptian authorities fear a great influx of Gazans – for whom they would then be responsible, for an indefinite period.
In addition, Egypt does not want to play any role in what could amount to a permanent resettlement of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from Gaza.”
https://www.yahoo.com/news/why-egypt-remains-reluctant-open-103715598.html
“The military has secured large areas of the strategic stretch of land bordering Palestinian-run Gaza and Israel on one side and the Suez Canal on the other, and is no longer on the back foot, witnesses, security sources and analysts say.
Civilian life is still severely curtailed but the long-neglected region is changing as the state forges ahead with development schemes.
Many of the militants have been killed, fled or surrendered. As few as 200 are still active, down from 400 two years ago and 800 in 2017, according to three Egyptian security sources.
In place of big attacks, they increasingly depend on snipers, homemade bombs and mortars.
On the outskirts of North Sinai’s main city Al Arish, near where razed olive farms once stood, the government has built new apartment blocks.
A resident said people just sought a return to normality.
“We’ve had enough,” said the man in his 50s, declining to be named. “We want to return to our houses or even the new ones they are building. We want to live in peace again.”
Egyptian authorities did not respond to a request for comment on the situation in North Sinai.”
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“Unrest roiled northern Sinai following the uprising in Egypt against Hosni Mubarak in 2011, escalating after the army overthrew President Mohamed Mursi, an Islamist, two years later.
In November 2017, the Islamic State-affiliated militant group Sinai Province claimed the most lethal attack in Egypt’s modern history, which killed more than 300 people at a North Sinai mosque, as well as an assassination attempt against the defence and interior ministers at Al Arish military airport.
The military started an operation in response in February 2018 and now appears to be in its strongest position in North Sinai – the only area in Egypt where there is regular militant activity – for at least a decade.”