What is the Israeli Defense Force supposed to do with a million or so Palestinian refugees as their operations to kill every last Hamas wipes the Gaza Strip from north to south like a giant, well-armed squeegee?
The President of Egypt, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, who is sometimes mistaken for the President of Mexico, has an answer to that vexing question — and it’s something of a completely routine miracle how the mainstream media and the Global Professional Outrage Machine have both ignored it.
The essence of el-Sisi’s answer is: “Do what you will to the Palestinians, Israel, but they aren’t coming here to Egpyt (or maybe Mexico).”
In practice, it’s much easier just to show you how Egypt protects its border with the Gaza Strip.
Egypt REALLLLLY doesn’t want any Palestinian refugees. This is the Rafah side of their border with Gaza. pic.twitter.com/fpQoTi7eFL
— Aviva Klompas (@AvivaKlompas) February 11, 2024
That’s what Egypt’s border wall looks like from the Gaza side near the city of Rafah. There are concrete barriers in front of what appears to be a steel wall — 30 feet tall is my guesstimate — featuring three layers of concertina wire. It looks a little like somebody took a World War I obstacle and turned it up on one end.
As Aviva Klompas, who posted the video clip noted, “Egypt REALLLLLY doesn’t want any Palestinian refugees.”
That might seem strange on the face of it since, for 20 years, Gaza was part of Egypt. It gets more curious still when you realize that if Egypt had wanted Gaza back, it could have gotten it (along with the entire Sinai peninsula) in its 1979 peace treaty with Israel.
Instead, then-Egyptian leader Anwar Sadat told Israeli PM Menachem Begin, “Nah, we’re good. You keep Gaza.” Sadat left a few hundred thousand fellow Arabs to the tender mercies of those hated Zionist colonial occupiers because it was the least bad option for Egypt.
Before the refounding of Israel in 1947, Jewish settlers to the British Palestine Mandate (and pre-WWI, to Ottoman Turkey’s South Syira province) often called themselves Palestinians. The local Arabs were a collection of mostly Syrians, plus some Egyptians, Lebanese, and others. “Palestinian” didn’t come into vogue for the Arab refugees of the Israeli War for Independence until the 1960s — and that was at the Soviet-funded behest of Yassar Arafat and his Palestinian Liberation Organization.
Some folks, who I’m otherwise inclined to agree with on Middle East issues, insist that there still isn’t any such thing as a Palestinian. But I must respectfully disagree.
Generations spent unprecedented as refugees, mixed up with the awfulness typical of occupation and lavish funding for terrorist leaders, have resulted in a uniquely Palestinian national identity.
It is also uniquely toxic.
King Hussein of Jordan gave sanctuary to Palestinians, and they thanked him with two assassination attempts. Like Egypt and Gaza, Jordan held the West Bank for 20 years but has adamantly refused to take it back. Palestinians were welcomed in Lebanon, where they immediately tried to overthrow the government.
Left to govern themselves since 2005 in Gaza, the “refugees” selected Hamas for their government with the usual one-man/one-vote/one-time method so popular with murderous autocrats and the angry masses who adore them. The destruction they tried to deliver unto Israel is now being delivered unto them, and maybe not even God wants to imagine what would happen should significant numbers flee into Egypt.
That’s why Egypt has a wall. And today maybe you’ve also learned why the press and the Global Professional Outrage Machine don’t want you to know the truth about it.
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