UN Agency Chief Warns Israel Trying to Expel Gazans into Egypt

Rabat – Head of the United Nations Agency for Palestinian Refugees is warning that Israel is actively working to expel the population of the Gaza Strip into Egypt, AFP reported.

The news comes as Israel continues its war on the Gaza Strip which has been ongoing for more than two months. Israel’s relentless bombardments of the strip have caused the displacement of most of Gaza’s population. However, Palestinians remain barred from leaving the Strip into Egypt.

In an opinion piece published on Saturday in the Los Angeles Times, UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini shed light on the worsening humanitarian crisis in Gaza and the increasing concentration of displaced civilians who fled the fighting, first in the north and then further south.

“The United Nations and several member states, including the US, have firmly rejected forcibly displacing Gazans out of the Gaza Strip,” Lazzarini said.

He continued: “But the developments we are witnessing point to attempts to move Palestinians into Egypt, regardless of whether they stay there or are resettled elsewhere.”

For Lazzarini, the destruction in Gaza’s north and the resulting displacements were “the first stage of such a scenario.” Meanwhile, forcing civilians from the southern city of Khan Yunis closer to the Egyptian border was the next.

“If this path continues, leading to what many are already calling a second Nakba, Gaza will not be a land for Palestinians anymore,” Lazzarini explained, using the Arabic term for the forced displacement of 760,000 Palestinians by Israel in 1948.

The news comes a month after Israeli Intelligence Minister Gila Gamliel said that one “option” following the end of the war would be “to promote the voluntary resettlement of Palestinians in Gaza, for humanitarian reasons, outside of the Strip.”

Former Israeli officials have said multiple times in TV interviews that Egypt could build “vast tent cities” in its Sinai desert using international aid.

A limited number of Gazans were allowed to enter Egypt for medical care, and some foreign nationals stranded in the region at the war’s start were allowed to leave through the Rafah crossing, the sole border point in Gaza not controlled by Israel.

Approximately 1.9 million displaced individuals out of a total population of 2.4 million in the territory are crowding in border towns.

Israel’s bloody campaign in the Gaza Strip claimed the lives of at least 17,700 people. Humanitarian groups are sounding the alarm on the dire situation in the besieged strip, describing it as “apocalyptic” and on the brink of a crisis from widespread disease and famine.