RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://pdavidhornik.substack.com/subscribe?utm_source=email&utm_campaign=email-subscribe&r=

President Trump’s talk about a removal of Gazans from Gaza—while transforming the coastal enclave into prime beachfront real estate, a Riviera on the eastern Mediterranean no less—struck many as outlandish. But many in Israel have taken the idea—at least the kernel of it, not necessarily with Trump’s trappings—seriously, and efforts are underway to get it off the ground.

Late last month, Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer—close confidant of Prime Minister Netanyahu—reportedly “held a ‘tense’ meeting with a senior Egyptian official…in Jerusalem.” The topic—or at least one of them—was moving Gazans into the vast, sparsely populated Sinai Peninsula. The Egyptian official

relayed that Cairo is alarmed by calls from Israeli politicians to push Palestinians into Gaza and stressed that Egypt views any such effort as an existential threat….

According to the sources, Dermer responded by maintaining that the Egyptian people are not as opposed to taking in Gazans as the Egyptian government is.

Alarmed by the answer—in addition to disagreeing with it—Egyptian officials have since sought to arrange a meeting for Dermer with some of the country’s more senior leaders in Cairo in order to further make the case against the relocation of Palestinians into the Sinai.

Unlike Jordan—a small country that already has a large, restive Palestinian population and is under a concerted effort by Iran to undermine its foundations—Egypt has a population of 107 million, while Gaza’s population comes to two million, and no one is suggesting a total population transfer. Egypt’s adamant opposition to taking in Gazans can be seen as a severe case of NIMBYism—even as, of course, Egypt officially intones the proper phrases about the “Palestinian cause.”

For now, Egypt’s President Sissi is turning a cold shoulder to Trump’s overtures for a White House meeting—where Sissi’s NIMBYism just might get exposed to a wide public.

Apart, though, from the specific issue of Egypt, the Israeli daily Israel Hayom reports that:

Israel has completed the necessary preparations to enable the migration of Gaza residents, provided countries are found willing to accept them. In recent weeks, a mechanism has been established, under the direction of Defense Minister Israel Katz, designed to create conditions that would allow 2,500 Gazans to leave the Strip daily….

Security sources told Israel Hayom that one country has already expressed interest in accepting construction workers from Gaza, but international controversy surrounding the issue has caused it to freeze its involvement in the matter for the time being.

The report goes on to describe how Gazans’ migration could be carried out by sea, air—or land:

Another departure route is the Rafah crossing [into the Sinai]. Through this crossing, according to information available to Israel, about 35,000 people have evacuated from the Strip to Egypt since the beginning of the war. In many cases, those leaving continued from Egypt to other destinations around the world.

While estimates of how many Gazans, since the October 7 war began, have already left Gaza via the Rafah crossing vary, all reports agree that the Gazans did so by paying hefty sums to Egyptian concerns. The majority of Gazans, of course, don’t have such sums; those are the ones Egypt—or at least official Egypt—is very averse to helping.

Israel, for its part,

is interested in allowing as many Gaza residents as possible to leave the Strip. Therefore, the policy is to allow family members of sick and wounded individuals to leave with them to other countries. In the vast majority of cases, those who left Gaza were absorbed into Arab countries, but there are also those who have already migrated to Romania and Italy with the intention of not returning.

“Our interest is to let as many people as possible leave. That’s the rationale of the Trump plan that Israel has expressed support for. We are trying to implement it,” said a security source.

Granting Gazans the basic human right of relocating to somewhere else on the planet can be a win-win for those Gazans and for Israel, for which a crowded, hostile Gaza has—clearly—posed a serious problem. The questions that remain are how many Gazans actually want to leave, and whether the countries to take them in can be found. What is not in question is that most Arab countries—dedicated to a “Palestinian cause” of keeping Gaza a thorn in Israel’s side—show galling hypocrisy.