Media is starting to gingerly ask why Egypt doesn't take in Gaza refugees

NPR published an article today, "Why Egypt won't allow vulnerable Palestinians across its border." 

While it is slanted towards the Egyptian point of view, it at least brings up facts that had been excluded from coverage of the topic up until now.

The satellite photo above captures the stark nature of the crisis on the Gaza-Egypt border.

On the right, more than 1 million displaced Palestinians are squeezed into tent camps on the Gaza side of the border, seeking shelter from Israel's ongoing offensive. On the left is Egypt's vast, thinly populated Sinai Peninsula, where the tightly controlled frontier has a heavy security presence.

This territory could provide a temporary safe haven for Palestinians from Gaza, where more than 29,000 people have been killed and nearly 70,000 wounded since the war began in October, according to Gaza's Health Ministry.

Egypt, however, has warned against an influx of refugees. It facilitates humanitarian aid into Gaza, but has said a mass exodus of Palestinians out of Gaza into Egypt is a red line, saying it fears Israel might never let the Palestinians go back.

And at the very end of the article it says:

 Overall, though, Israel's siege of the Gaza Strip has entrapped the territory's population, unlike other wars where refugees can find a country to flee to.

When Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine two years ago, millions of Ukrainians poured into neighboring Poland, which welcomed them.

When Syria descended into civil war in 2011, millions fled to neighboring countries. They included an estimated 120,000 Palestinians, who were already refugees in Syria before they sought shelter elsewhere, according to the U.N. agency that handles Palestinian refugees.

Egypt already hosts around 9 million refugees from the region, though it does not have formal refugee camps. The refugees live like long-term residents among Egyptians in big cities like Cairo. This is very different from the Palestinian refugee camps in several other Arab countries.

This was the first article I've seen that even mentions these facts that I have been reporting from the beginning of the war. 

But it is not the only one that is going a little beyond parroting Egyptian talking points. DW.com reported on February 14:

 Mirette Mabrouk, founding director of the Washington-based Middle East Institute's Egypt program, said, "If Palestinians do come across the border, Egypt is going to take them in. They are not going to start shooting at desperate women and children."

In fact, local authorities in North Sinai have been preparing for this for months, readying emergency accommodation and medical aid in case it is needed, she told DW. The Wall Street Journal has previously reported that Egypt could potentially accommodate up to 100,000 people in the border areas if needed.

"It's not that Egypt can't assimilate them — the country already hosts millions of refugees from places like Syria and Sudan. It's that Egypt doesn't want to be party to another Nakba," Mabrouk said,

Perhaps fearful that there will be increasing pressure on Egypt to allow Gazans to flee there, Al Jazeera Mubasher used a time honored propaganda method: interviewing Gazans who swear they would rather die than leave their beloved Palestine.

The facts show otherwise: Gazans have been paying enormous amounts in bribes to escape to Egypt. But Al Jazeera will only interview the people who parrot their official line that Palestinians do not want to leave, and then pretend that they represent all Gazans.

Yet no one is saying Gazans should be deported to Egypt. The question is whether the ones who want to leave should have that right. 

I found another NGO that asserts that right - except for Gazans.

The Refugees Platform in Egypt wants a word "where everyone is allowed to move freely and safely, within societies that contribute to supporting and advocating for the rights of vulnerable and marginalized groups." But when it comes to Gaza, they say, Egypt must only open Rafah for the injured, not for people who want to take refuge.

Nothing brings out hypocrisy like antisemitism.

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