CAIRO: Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi rejected on Wednesday any plans for Palestinian displacement, hours after Israel’s defense minister said the army would “finish the job” in Gaza and remove Palestinians.
During a visit by Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas, Sisi “reiterated Egypt’s firm stance against the displacement of the Palestinian people or any attempt to annihilate the Palestinian cause.”
Abbas praised Egypt’s “steadfast positions,” Palestinian news agency WAFA reported.
Egypt shares the only land border with the Gaza Strip that is not controlled by Israel, and has since 2023 rejected plans to displace the territory’s more than two million people into the Sinai Peninsula.
Last year, Egyptian Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty said Cairo had turned down multiple offers to forgive parts of its massive foreign debt bill in exchange for allowing mass displacement into its territory.
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz on Wednesday said it was only a matter of time before Israel resumes full-scale war in Gaza, “to finish the job so that we can also implement the migration plan.”
He said earlier this month that Israel was ready to remove Palestinians from Gaza by sea and land but was waiting for the United States, which he said was discussing where the two million people would go.
US Ambassador Mike Huckabee has denied any plan to “displace people out of Gaza against their will.”
Nearly all of Gaza’s population has been internally displaced and most of the territory lies in rubble after three years of a war that has killed more than 73,700 Palestinians.
The war began on October 7, 2023, after a Hamas-led attack on Israel that killed 1,221 people, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli official figures.
Abbas also briefed Sisi on Israeli moves in the occupied West Bank, “most recently the implementation of the E1 settlement plan, which seeks to separate the northern and southern parts” of the Palestinian territory.
The major settlement, which would further separate east Jerusalem from the West Bank, was green-lit by Israel last year and has been met with international criticism.
The UN secretary general has said the E1 plan posed an “existential threat” to a contiguous Palestinian state.
