As we've seen, Egypt constructed a huge wall and other barriers to block any chance of Gazans escaping.
In every other war zone, human rights groups are solidly on the side of refugees and displaced persons. They show zero sympathy towards the nations that restrict entry of refugees.
Except when the refugees are Palestinian.
Last July, Human Rights Watch condemned Egypt for making it more difficult for Sudanese refugees to enter Egypt. It wasn't a ban, just additional procedures:
Egyptian authorities have claimed the new entry visa rule would reduce visa forgery. As of late June, thousands of displaced people remained stranded in dire humanitarian conditions as they attempted to obtain an entry visa from the Egyptian consulate in Wadi Halfa, a Sudanese town near the Egyptian border. Some have been compelled to wait up to a month as they struggled to secure food, accommodation, and health care.“The need to combat visa forgery does not justify Egypt denying or delaying entry to people fleeing Sudan’s devastating conflict,” said Amr Magdi, senior Middle East and North Africa researcher at Human Rights Watch. “The Egyptian government should rescind its entry visa rule for Sudanese nationals during the current crisis, permit them swift entry, and facilitate access to asylum procedures or treat them as the refugees most if not all are.”
Amnesty similarly said:
“Allowing swift passage across borders for all people fleeing the conflict and providing immediate access to asylum registration would ease the dire humanitarian situation along the borders,” said Tigere Chagutah, Amnesty International’s regional director for East and Southern Africa
“States should not deny access to those fleeing a conflict based on a lack of identification documents or visas. Yet, the stringent entry regulations on those without valid travel documents or visas have created insurmountable barriers for individuals in desperate need of safety, leaving them at serious risk.
But when it comes to Egypt (and Jordan) creating far more draconian measures to stop every single Gazan from escaping, literally making Gaza into a prison for those who want desperately to flee, , suddenly these human rights groups and others are mute. These righteous words about the rights of desperate people in war zones are never, ever applied to Palestinians in Gaza.
All of these groups issue more and lengthier reports on human rights for Palestinians than for any other group in the world. But their concern for Palestinian human rights suddenly ends if helping them also helps Israel destroy a terrorist group with fewer casualties.
Hamas has built its entire war strategy on using innocent Gazans as human shields. HRW, Amnesty, Oxfam and Gisha are on Hamas' side: they all agree with Hamas that Gaza civilians should protect the rapists, kidnappers and mass murderers of Jews.
Indeed, the only reason for their silence is that they would prefer thousands of Gazans die than Israel defeating Hamas.
The hypocrisy cannot be more obvious. These groups discard human rights when it conflicts with their anti-Israel agendas.
The real irony is that if these so-called human rights defenders would treat Palestinians the way they treat Sudanese and Eritreans in danger, the world would pressure Egypt - and hundreds of thousands of Gazans could be out of danger. Gazans are in the headlines far more than these other groups, and a single word against Egypt's reprehensible behavior would be widely publicized and start a serious debate that could easily result in Egypt's caving to pressure, or at the very least negotiating a way to leverage the crisis into helping Egypt's economy to handle the additional influx - something that other nations would be glad to fund.
This is a case where human rights groups could actually save lives. And they are making an active choice that they'd rather see Gazans die so they can write up more reports about how monstrous Israel is.
