- 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.
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.