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CAIRO — With more than 1,500 people dead in Gaza and hundreds of thousands displaced by the Israeli military’s relentless bombardment of the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/10/09/gaza-strip-israel-hamas-explained/" target=_blank>Gaza Strip</a>, global attention has focused on the Rafah border crossing with Egypt, the only viable way out of the densely populated enclave.

But Cairo, wary of political fallout and security risks, is determined to prevent an exodus of refugees to Egypt — warning it could be a death knell for the Palestinian dream of statehood.

The crossing point at Gaza’s southern edge has been effectively closed since Tuesday after Israeli airstrikes damaged infrastructure in the area.

<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/05/13/israel-hamas-war-news-gaza-palestine/" target=_blank>Israeli forces are advancing on the southern city of Rafah</a>, aiming to destroy what Israeli officials have called the last significant Hamas stronghold in Gaza, at the same time that<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/05/12/israel-hamas-war-news-gaza-palestine/" target=_blank> Israel and the militant group are again clashing in areas in the north</a>.

As the humanitarian crisis in Gaza grows more dire by the hour, there are intensifying calls for the opening of a humanitarian corridor to bring in desperately needed food, water, fuel and medical supplies. <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/10/13/israel-gaza-hamas-war-west-bank/" target=_blank>Israel’s sudden evacuation order</a> Friday for the more than 1.1 million residents of Gaza City has added to the pressure.

In a statement Friday evening, Egypt’s Foreign Ministry called the Israeli evacuation order “a grave violation of the rules of international humanitarian law.”

Egypt is stockpiling aid sent by humanitarian organizations and Middle Eastern countries in northern Sinai, ready to be driven into Gaza should the Rafah crossing reopen. The country also launched a blood drive Thursday under orders from President Abdel Fatah El-Sisi.

In a speech at a military academy on Thursday evening, Sisi said Egypt — long a key interlocutor between Israel and Palestinian factions — was “ready to coordinate with all parties” and “keen to deliver humanitarian and medical aid to the [Gaza] Strip.”

Sisi and Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry have engaged in a flurry of phone calls and meetings with governments around the world in recent days.

But the question of whether to permit large numbers of Palestinians to exit Gaza to Egypt has revived a decades-old dilemma for Cairo. The government is concerned about security in the Sinai region and wants to avoid being seen as complicit in a campaign that could force Palestinians out of Gaza for good.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told Palestinians in Gaza to “get out now” on Saturday, as he vowed to avenge the shocking attack by Hamas militants inside Israel that killed at least 1,300 people. But for Gazans, who <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/10/09/gaza-strip-israel-hamas-explained/" target=_blank>have lived for 16 years under a blockade</a> maintained by Israel and Egypt, that is currently an impossible ask.

As bombs fall and border crossings close, Gazans have nowhere to run

Even in times of relative peace, Egypt maintains tight control of the border. Palestinians wishing to exit Gaza must obtain permission from both Palestinian and Egyptian authorities. Wait times are long, and getting access to a speedier route often requires paying a hefty fee to private travel agencies. Northern Sinai, where Egypt has battled Islamist militants for a decade, is heavily militarized.

Egypt has taken in sizable numbers of refugees from other conflicts, including those displaced this year by the fighting in neighboring Sudan. But Sinai is more sensitive, and the Palestinian question is much more fraught.

Islam Safwat

Unnamed Egyptian security sources told Sky News Arabia on Tuesday that “there is a plan to liquidate Palestinian lands and force Palestinians to choose between death and displacement.”

It is far from clear that large numbers of Palestinians have any desire to flee their home for Egypt, despite the dangers.

“When we say that [the border] should be open for Gazans and give them the agency” to leave, said Nancy Okail, president of the D.C.-based Center for International Policy, “in reality, that’s not really a choice. When you’re trapped between death and leaving, that’s not giving people a choice — that’s forcing people.”

The mass displacement of Palestinians during the founding of the state of Israel in 1948 — an event Palestinians refer to as the Nakba, or “catastrophe” in Arabic — remains a profound source of intergenerational trauma. Some <a href="https://reliefweb.int/report/occupied-palestinian-territory/enduring-palestine-refugee-crisis-nakba-sheikh-jarrah-gaza" target="_blank">70 percent of Gazans</a> are already refugees, having fled or been forced from their homes in parts of what is now Israel, and never allowed to return.

“We see these pro forma statements about a two-state solution, but I don’t think Gazans can count on the idea that if they were forced to leave, that there would be much in the way of pressure to get them back,” said H.A. Hellyer, an analyst in the Middle East Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

For Egypt, a massive influx of Palestinian refugees would pose significant political and security risks, analysts said. Public opinion is deeply sympathetic to the Palestinian cause, an issue with the rare power to ignite public anger in an authoritarian country where meaningful protest is effectively outlawed.

Talk of pushing Palestinians to Sinai as a more permanent solution is “not acceptable,” former Egyptian foreign minister Mohamed al-Orabi, now chairman of the government-linked Egyptian Foreign Relations Council, told The Washington Post. “If you were to talk about this alternative home, this would be the end of the Palestinian question.”

Before the war, Sisi was already under significant domestic pressure, with the Egyptian economy in free-fall and a presidential election scheduled for December. Sisi faces no real threat at the ballot box, but rumblings of dissent have grown louder in recent months.

“Politically, I don’t think any Arab state wants to be seen as helping the displacement of the Palestinian population,” said Timothy Kaldas, deputy director of the D.C.-based Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy.

In public comments this week, Sisi has been careful to emphasize Egypt’s support for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and has called repeatedly for peace.

With Gaza and Israel at war, Palestinian Authority struggles to be heard

On Thursday, he rejected “relentless efforts by multiple parties” to push a resolution to the Palestinian question that diverges from the 1993 Oslo accords, the international agreements that were meant to pave the way for a Palestinian state.

“The Palestinian cause is the cause of all Arabs, and Palestinians should stay on their lands,” he said.

Egypt is trying to advance a “prudent policy,” al-Orabi, the former foreign minister, said — one oriented around organizing aid deliveries, taking in smaller numbers of injured Palestinians for medical treatment and helping foreign nationals to leave Gaza.

UNICEF, the United Nations children’s agency, is operating under the assumption that “there will be an opportunity — a humanitarian corridor — where the crossing will be open for supplies,” Jeremy Hopkins, the agency’s Egypt representative, told The Post on Thursday.

UNICEF is also working with the Egyptian Red Crescent to ready medical and other services in Egypt for groups of particularly vulnerable Palestinians who may be allowed to cross the border.

“They are talking about small numbers of people — thousands but not hundreds of thousands — being allowed to cross the border to seek assistance,” he said.

Even if accepting large numbers of refugees was politically palatable, it would be logistically challenging to accommodate them in northern Sinai, humanitarian and rights groups say. The regional governor on Sunday directed local authorities to prepare for hosting displaced people by identifying schools, residential units and vacant lots that could be used as shelters.

But the border region is ill-equipped to handle hundreds of thousands of refugees, according to Ahmed Salem, executive director of the Sinai Foundation for Human Rights, a U.K.-registered rights groups with a team based in northern Sinai.

During Egypt’s decade-long fight against an Islamic State-linked insurgency in Sinai, dozens of local schools — facilities often used in crisis situations to house displaced people — have been destroyed or taken over by the military. And the main hospital in Arish has insufficient food, staff and medical supplies to handle a major influx of wounded people, Salem said.

Security is also likely on the minds of Egyptian authorities: It would be difficult to prevent Hamas fighters from slipping into Egypt among groups of refugees, Kaldas said, and Egypt might fear weapons would cross over and fuel militancy in Sinai.

The Sinai Foundation for Human Rights recorded an uptick in Egyptian military patrols, troops and vehicles in the border region in recent days.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken is scheduled to travel to Cairo on Sunday, as part of a whirlwind tour to countries in the region aimed at containing the conflict. Egyptian officials will aim to convince American officials to push for a peace process, al-Orabi said.

“Israel should restrain [itself] now,” he said. “This vicious circle of violence, it will not end the Palestinian question, it will not kill all the Palestinians. They will remain and they will resist.”

<i>Heba Farouk Mahfouz contributed to this report.</i>

Harvard University, BA in social studies with a minor in Middle Eastern studies and an Arabic language citation

Claire Parker is the Cairo bureau chief for The Washington Post, leading coverage of North Africa and Yemen.

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