Israel’s Intelligence Ministry has drafted a wartime proposal to transfer the Gaza Strip’s 2.3 million people to Egypt’s Sinai Desert
The conclusions of the document has raised fears of reenactment of the traumatic memories of An – nabkha ” the catastrophe “— the uprooting of hundreds of thousands of Palestinian people who fled or were forced from their homes during the fighting surrounding the forceful creation of Israel in 1948.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office has down played the report compiled by it’s own Intelligence Ministry as a hypothetical exercise — a “concept paper.” But its conclusions have sent shock waves into Egypt who fears that Israel wants to make Gaza into Egypt’s problem.
The document details plan to move Gaza’s civilian population to initial tent cities in northern Sinai, then later building permanent cities and an undefined humanitarian corridor to serve as security buffer zone would be established inside Israel to block the displaced Palestinians from entering. Though the report did not say what would become of Gaza once its population is forcefully cleared out, it is not unlikely that it will be annexed by Israel to continue settlement expansion on occupied territories.
Egypt is wary of the plan because it does not want Palestinian refugees within it’s borders as it happened during the forceful evacuation of Palestinians from their land for the creation of what is now Israel.
Egypt’s president, Abdul Fattah As-Sissi, has said a mass influx of refugees from Gaza would create security problems for Egypt and Israel. He believes it will attract militants into the Sinai Desert thereby compromising both Nations security. “That would endanger the countries’ 1979 peace treaty” he was quoted to have said. He proposed that Israel should rather house Palestinians in its Negev Desert, which borders the Gaza Strip, until it ends its military operations.
The document also details the expected logistics support from countries like Egypt, Turkey, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. These countries are to support the plan either financially, or by taking in uprooted residents of Gaza as refugees and later in the long term as citizens. It is also expected that Europe and American countries as humanitarian gesture, can take in these displaced Gaza citizens as refugees as it occurred during the Iraqi and Syrian wars.
Israeli officials familiar with the document continue to downplay it and have also said it is yet to be discussed, realities on ground says otherwise.
