• Egypt has created a buffer zone for no legitimate reason all the way back since Sisi’s inception.
• A shocking revelation that could highlight Egyptian president Sisi’s betrayal of both the Palestinians and Egyptian statehood
After the removal of Mohammed Morsi, Egypt’s first democratically elected leader, it was assumed by Western powers that stability and prosperity would occur under a new government that had gripped the Egyptian people with poverty, autocracy, subjugation, and tyranny.
The will to protest or speak out against the oppression faced under Egyptian tyranny had become a thing of the past, with the struggles of day-to-day life reaching such difficulty that the will for revolution and change became overwhelmed.
A nationalist may have thought that since no war or violence is spreading in public, the sacrifice under an autocratic rule is better for Egyptian statehood and stability. A government that is stable and has killed its opposition is forced to only improve the state for the sake of its own popularity and image.
This mentality, of supporting a tyrant for the sake of upgrading living standards, something that has failed in Egypt year upon year, has an undertone of an agenda against its people, the agenda of forced displacement of the Gazan people into Egyptian territory.
The silent ethnic cleansing of the Sinai Peninsula, bordering Gaza
Since 2013, after the removal of Mohammed Morsi by Egyptian military chief Abdel Fatah el-Sisi, who later became Egypt’s president, a dramatic offensive was pursued around Egypt to tackle what Sisi claimed were extremists of the former Muslim Brotherhood government.
One of the main areas of the offence was the Sinai Peninsula, an area west of Gaza housing tens of thousands of people.
As the nationwide offensive continued, the offensive in Sinai became prolonged while other areas had since calmed down.
Only in January 2023 did Sisi claim an end to the Sinai offensive, almost a decade after it began, but what really took place in Sinai was more than just an offensive to cleanse the area of remnants of the old government, more than just an offensive to destroy what the Egyptian dictatorship called ‘terrorism’; it was the preparation of the Zionist plan to displace Palestinians to the Sinai peninsula.
The complete displacement of the Egyptian city of Rafah
Contrary to popular opinion, Rafah was not just a city in Southern Gaza; it was rather a city that extended beyond the border walls of Gaza into the Eastern Egyptian territories of Sinai.
Before 2014, the city of Rafah in the Egyptian side hosted 78,000 people with a grassroots community that had lived in the area for generations.
The entire city of Rafah in Egypt was demolished and cleared by Sisi’s government, displacing 78,000 people, with the Egyptian military cutting communication networks during the forgotten ethnic cleansing.
Over 30 miles along the Gaza border was cleared.
The Egyptian government had claimed that the area was used by jihadists with underground tunnel systems to receive weapons, fighters, and logistical help from Palestinian militants in Gaza.
Human Rights Watch said that little to no evidence was used to support this justification, citing statements from Egyptian and Israeli officials who themselves said that weapons were more likely attained from Libya or captured from the Egyptian army.
Human Rights Watch adds that the US has given training to Egyptians with sophisticated tunnel-detecting equipment to find out how to eliminate tunnels without destroying houses.
So why did Sisi’s Egypt resort to the complete demolition of 30 miles of territory along the Gaza Strip while displacing more than 78,000 with blackouts when it could have easily saved time and effort if it had chosen to detect and destroy tunnels in other less expensive ways and removed its enemies without destroying the local economy?
Why did Sisi admit in 2019 that Israel aided it in battling its enemies in the Sinai?
The answer to those question may probably, if not almost certainly, lie in the fact that the Egyptian regime was working alongside Israel to displace the Palestinians in Gaza to the Sinai.
The walls
In February 2024, during the height of the Gaza genocide, when it looked as if an offensive in the border Gazan city of Rafah was imminent, satellite imagery and monitoring groups had confirmed that an enclosed area with high concrete walls was being built in a ring along the Gaza border in the buffer zone.
The construction of the walls and the timing suggest that Egypt was preparing to receive Palestinian civilians from Gaza, something the Egyptian regime had publicly denied numerous times but looked as if they were working towards.
Then follows the recent announcement by US president Trump on moving Gazan civilians into the Sinai Peninsula because of the destruction that occurred out of Israel’s genocide.
The events above are unlikely to have by chance complimented each other in becoming the reality it has reached so far.
As soon as Egyptian dictator Sisi had gotten into power, he unleashed one of the largest massacres in modern-day history, with some estimates numbering the kill count as more than a thousand civilians in Egypt’s capital, Cairo.
The US, which had previously sanctioned and cut all military aid to former Egyptian leader Hosni Mubarak, had for Sisi temporarily cut military aid in what appeared to be solidarity with civilians only to reinstate it later in 2015.
Even with the atrocious levels of bloodshed and harsh repression that followed the Egyptian military takeover by Sisi, the US had not called the coup a coup and thus granted legitimacy to the new Egyptian regime from the very beginning of its inception, even with the tyranny that was exhibited.
The Greater Gaza plan
Details first leaked in the Israeli media in 2014, although reports indicate that the origins date to 2007, was that the only place for the people of Gaza to go was the Sinai Peninsula with the Bush administration on board the plan.
At the time, Israel’s secret plan was to attach Gaza to Sinai, erasing the border between the two.
Washington would act to help secure international funding for a free trade zone in Sinai.
With unemployment at above 60 percent with massive overcrowding in the Gaza enclave and little clean water to drink, the expectation was that Palestinians in Gaza would gradually move to Sinai, settling there or moving to distant Egyptian cities.
An official close to former president Hosni Mubarak admitted that the screws had been turned on him in 2007 to agree to annex Gaza, something he reportedly rejected.
Five years later, according to the same source, Mohamed Morsi, who ruled for one year, sent a delegation to Washington. There, the Americans proposed that “Egypt cede a third of the Sinai to Gaza in a two-stage process spanning four to five years”. Morsi too refused.
In 2014, under President Sisi, however, there were no confirmable reports of refusal, with President Mohammed Abbas of the Palestinian Authority himself claiming in an interview on Egyptian TV that Israel’s Sinai plan had been “unfortunately accepted by some here [in Egypt]. Don’t ask me more about that. We abolished it.”
The idea received another boost in attention in 2018 when, under Donald Trump’s ‘deal of a century,’ it was hoped that the Greater Gaza plan would be financed by Gulf states as part of their normalisation with Israel.
The removal of the entire Gazan population from Gaza into Sinai would be a fatal blow to Palestinian identity, with the displaced Gazan people having to integrate into Egyptian society, with every Palestinian organisation and movement originally based in Gaza forced to dismantle and assimilate to prevent the wrath of the Egyptian regime.
The plan to resettle Gazans into the Sinai and its geopolitical consequences
Living standards in Egypt have become worse year upon year, with Egypt now being the second largest debtor to the IMF.
With inflation at 24% in December last year, and basic necessities becoming more expensive for the Egyptian people, adding in another 2.1 million Gaza refugees while maintaining security, order, and stability will become more difficult, especially if an insurgency breaks out in the Sinai as a result.
It does not benefit the Egyptian state to house 2.1 million Palestinian refugees in the Sinai, especially when senior Israeli officials in Netanyahu’s cabinet suggest that they want the Sinai peninsula occupied.
The presence of Palestinians in Sinai, especially those from Gaza, will give justification for Israel to occupy and invade the Sinai under the guise of fighting terrorism and Palestinian resistance.
Yet Egyptian president Sisi has been preparing to resettle the Gazan people into Sinai since 2013, something neither of his predecessors had agreed to or wanted.
This is evidence that the Egyptian president has committed a grave act of treachery against his people to satisfy western powers while sacrificing the living standards and stability of his own country.
It’s possible Sisi’s public statements are to ward off domestic and institutional pressure who would view the Gaza displacement as an act of betrayal if publicly supported.
Nonetheless, to support a decision by the US that is damaging to Palestinian statehood and Egyptian security, economy, and stability indicates that the Egyptian regime is no longer a regime driven by nationalism like under Hosni Mubarak and his predecessors but rather a regime bound to Western influence even when it presides over its own.
