Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi has rejected a proposal from the US to manage the security of the Gaza Strip after Hamas.
The proposal, which was put forward during a meeting between Sisi and CIA Director William Burns, would have seen Egypt take temporary control of the Gaza Strip before it was transferred to the Palestinian Authority, which is dominated by Hamas’s rival faction Fatah.
According to senior Egyptian officials who spoke on condition of anonymity to The Wall Street Journal, Sisi said that Egypt would not help Israel against Hamas because it needed the group to ensure border security between Egypt and the Gaza Strip.
The comments come as questions arise over who will take control of the Gaza Strip following the end of Israel’s assault on the territory, with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu telling ABC News that he thought “Israel will for an indefinite period have the overall security responsibility because we’ve seen what happens when we don’t have that security responsibility.”
US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, however, has said that there would be no “reoccupation of Gaza” by Israel after the war, although White House spokesperson John Kirby said that it was “likely” Israel would have “some initial security responsibilities” following the war.
Blinken also claimed that there would be “no forced displacement of Palestinians from Gaza, not now, not after the war” and “no use of Gaza as a platform for terrorism or other violent attacks.”
A post-war Gaza “must include Palestinian-led governance and Gaza unified with the West Bank under the Palestinian Authority,” he added.
Northern Gaza has witnessed a mass exodus of people since the beginning of the war when Israel ordered the 1.1 million people who lived in the north of the territory to move south.
This has prompted fears of ethnic cleansing and a “second Nakba” with a leaked Israeli document suggesting that Israel wanted to displace most of Gaza’s population to Egypt.
Since the start of its ground invasion, which has seen the Israeli army encircle the north and push deeper into Gaza City, 50,000 Palestinians have fled the Israeli designated “combat zone”, according to the Israeli government.
Israel’s bombardment, siege and ground operation in the Gaza Strip has killed 10,812 people, including 4,412 children, with a further 26,905 people being injured.
Source: The New Arab