- Rafah crossing closed following Israeli bombardments
- Crossing is main gateway to outside world for Gazans
- Egypt concerned Israeli assault will drive displacement
- Israel revised recommendation for people to head south
Egypt is moving to avert a mass exodus from the Gaza Strip into its Sinai Peninsula, as Israeli bombardment halted crossings at the main exit point from the Palestinian enclave on Tuesday, Gaza officials and Egyptian security sources said.
Israel’s assault on Gaza has caused alarm in Egypt, which has urged Israel to provide safe passage for civilians from the enclave rather than encouraging them to flee southwest towards Sinai, two Egyptian security sources said.
Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi said on Tuesday that the escalation in Gaza was “highly dangerous” and that Egypt was pursuing a negotiated solution to the violence with regional and international partners.
Egypt would not allow the issue to be settled at the expense of others, Sisi said in comments reported by state news agency MENA, an apparent reference to the risk that Palestinians could be pushed into Sinai.
The Rafah border crossing remained shut on Wednesday morning, after Egyptian military planes conducted flights nearby overnight, security sources said. The military has also taken up new positions close to the border, running patrols to monitor the area, said Ahmed Salem of the Sinai Foundation for Human Rights.
Christ that article title and image is poignant and depressing.
Egypt is really the elephant in the room for the Gaza Strip. It’s an open-air prison, sure, but Egypt holds one of the jail cell doors shut on their side.
Egypt is a fragile military dictatorship. they know they are at the mercy of the west, if they don’t comply with the US and Israeli plans for the region. a military or civil war will be on its way to them in less than a month. in fact all the Arab regimes are the same. their survival is tied to US approval, that’s why they started normalizing relations with Israel despite public opinion being in majority against that.
God I hope Egypt can help bring a good close to this war and everything with pressure on Israel and doesn’t end up just making things worse for the Palestinians…
Don’t hold your breath. This article says Egypt is closing their border.
Yeah but a cessation of the war is to a degree in their best interest so they’d hopefully put pressure to stop it cause they can reopen the borders if the war ends which means they aren’t doing weird things there and their soldiers are less in danger.
Bad news, since Hamas’ takeover in 05-06, Egypt has had the Rafah crossing almost completely closed; therfore reopening it is almost completely out of the question.
Edit, the article states why: “Security in the area around Rafah is also of concern to Egypt because Sinai has been the site of an Islamist insurgency that flared a decade ago. Hamas, which has run the Gaza Strip since 2007, shares the Islamist ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood, a movement outlawed in Egypt.”
Rafah crossing has almost never been open for over a decade. Egypt doesn’t want a ton of Palestinian refugees either. So yeah, while it’s in their best interest that the conflict ends, they’re not doing many actions to reduce the human suffering in Gaza.
There’s the Egyptian state, which is pretty much the army, and the Egyptian people. Very different sympathies and motives.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi said on Tuesday that the escalation in Gaza was “highly dangerous” and that Egypt was pursuing a negotiated solution to the violence with regional and international partners.
Egypt would not allow the issue to be settled at the expense of others, Sisi said in comments reported by state news agency MENA, an apparent reference to the risk that Palestinians could be pushed into Sinai.
The Rafah border crossing remained shut on Wednesday morning, after Egyptian military planes conducted flights nearby overnight, security sources said.
The military has also taken up new positions close to the border, running patrols to monitor the area, said Ahmed Salem of the Sinai Foundation for Human Rights.
The rest of the densely populated strip is surrounded by the sea, and by Israel, which has announced a total siege of Gaza and could launch a ground offensive.
Gaza’s Hamas-run Interior Ministry said bombardments on both Monday and Tuesday had hit an entry gate on the Palestinian side of the Rafah crossing.
The original article contains 573 words, the summary contains 170 words. Saved 70%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
I know it’s common for countries to want to avoid a flood of refugees over their borders and such. And I’m sure there are many good reasons why. But I’ve never been told what those are. Like supposedly China continues propping up NK so it doesn’t collapse, which would have a lot of refugees flooding their border. But… is dealing with that really harder than propping up NK for decades?
