The Israeli government has broached the notion of relocating Gaza’s 2.3 million population to Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula in a draft proposal. Palestinians have already condemned and rejected the proposal.
The draft was produced by Israel’s intelligence ministry on October 13, giving three options “to effect a significant change in the civilian reality in the Gaza Strip in light of the Hamas crimes that led to the Sword of Iron War.”
What exactly is the proposal?
According to the document, the civilian population of Gaza will be relocated to tent settlements in northern Sinai. They will then be relocated to permanent cities, and an unspecified humanitarian corridor will be formed.
The plan also suggests establishing a “security zone” within Israel to prevent Palestinians from joining the Jewish state.
The Prime Minister’s office downplays the document
The report was dismissed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s administration as a “concept paper.”
Although no timetable for implementation has been established, the draft has already brought up the worst memories of Palestinians: wholesale displacement from their homes owing to severe violence in the region in the late 1940s.
Palestinians have already voiced their opposition to any such designs. “We are against transfer to any place, in any form, and we consider it a red line that we will not allow to be crossed,” Nabil Abu Rudeineh, spokesman for Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, said of the report. “What happened in 1948 will not be allowed to happen again,” he added.
Long-standing reservations about Israel
Egypt has long been concerned that Israel may want to forcibly move Palestinians into its territory, as happened during the fighting that preceded Israel’s founding.
Egypt ruled Gaza from 1948 to 1967, when it was taken over by Israel, along with the West Bank and East Jerusalem. The bulk of Gaza’s inhabitants today are descendants of Palestinian refugees who fled what is now Israel.
Egypt’s president, Abdel Fattah El-Sissi, has stated that a large number of Gaza refugees would be detrimental to the Palestinian nationalist cause. He also emphasizes the possibility of extremists entering Sinai and launching assaults on Israel, which might jeopardize the two countries’ 1979 peace accord.
He proposed as an alternative that Israel could provide housing for Palestinians in its Negev Desert, which borders the Gaza Strip.