Egypt bitter as Sudan's RSF commander Hemedti proposes to host Gaza refugees

Egypt is ringing alarm bells over a potential plan for the transfer of a sizeable number of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip to areas controlled by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in Sudan.

The concerns come against the background of a plan by US President Donald Trump to take over the coastal Palestinian enclave, kick its people out and build it into a "Middle East Riviera".

They also come in the wake of media reports about United Arab Emirates-sponsored attempts by RSF commander Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, widely known as Hemedti, to curry favour with Trump's administration by proposing to take in some of the people of Gaza in areas controlled by his militia in Sudan.

Such a plan angers Cairo, which has been lobbying hard to foil the US president's plan.

"Egypt staunchly opposes the displacement of the people of Gaza because it is keen on protecting the rights of the Palestinians to their land," Egyptian political researcher Mohamed Rabie al-Dehi remarked to The New Arab.

"Hemedti's proposal to take in Gaza refugees makes it necessary for all Arab states to act to rescue Palestinian statehood dreams," he added.

Little influence over RSF

There has been no confirmation of the aforementioned reports from either the US or the UAE. The RSF commander Hemedti has not spoken openly about such a plan either.

Nonetheless, Abu Dhabi maintains close relations with the paramilitary Sudanese group which has been locked in a war with the Sudanese army since mid-April 2023, one that has so far destroyed most of Sudan, caused the displacement of millions of Sudanese citizens, both inside and outside Sudan, and opened the door for the emergence of one of the world's worst humanitarian crises.

Close relations between the UAE and the RSF have turned the Sudanese army and Sudan's Transitional Sovereign Council, the ruling body in Sudan, against Abu Dhabi, with the council accusing the Gulf state of offering arms and financial support to its rival militia.

The Sudanese government has also filed a lawsuit against the UAE at the International Court of Justice, accusing it of complicity with the RSF in perpetrating genocide in Sudan.

Egypt's problem with a scenario where the RSF proposes to take in Gaza refugees in areas it controls in Sudan derives from the little influence it has over the Sudanese militia.

The RSF shares control over Sudanese cities with the Sudanese army. In recent weeks, the paramilitary group intensified its military campaign against the army, having apparently received a fresh supply of arms from its regional benefactors, especially unmanned aerial vehicles.

Now, the RSF controls large swaths of eastern Sudan, along with areas in the western part of the African country where allied militias prevail.

The intensification of the RSF campaign also came hard on the heels of significant victories by the Sudanese army, especially in Sudanese capital, Khartoum.

Cairo has been a strong backer of the Sudanese army, a policy enshrined in Egypt's foreign policy doctrine which bans relations with non-state actors or militias.

This backing has caused relations between Cairo and the RSF to teeter on the edge of hostility, with the militia repeatedly accusing the Egyptian air force of striking its positions and killing its fighters.

"The RSF is a fascist militia that has suffered one defeat after another in the past period," Sudanese political analyst Amgad Farid told TNA.

"It works tooth and nail to prove its relevance by criticising and antagonising Egypt, a regional heavyweight whether it likes it or not," he added.

Stab in the back?

Egypt and the UAE are close allies, but whether Cairo can convince Abu Dhabi to drop the purported Gaza people transfer plan to RSF-controlled areas in Sudan depends on the latter's calculations, observers in Cairo said.

The same plan is seen as 'a stab in the back' for Egypt, which has been campaigning fiercely against President Trump's Gaza takeover plan since the US president made it public in February this year.

President Trump doubled down on the same plan several times in the past weeks, including most recently during his tour of three Arab Gulf states, his first outside his country since his inauguration in January this year, when he said he wanted to turn Gaza into a "freedom zone".

Apart from publicly rejecting Trump's plan and describing it as "gross injustice", Egypt also formulated a parallel plan that aspires to reconstruct Gaza without the displacement of its people.

Cairo rallied Arab and Islamic states behind the same plan and intends to host a conference on Gaza's reconstruction where it will try to raise the $53 billion required for its execution.

In Cairo, analysts say, Egypt's opposition to the US president's plan for Gaza is rooted in its belief that the depopulation of this war-devastated Palestinian territory will pave the way for the liquidation of the Palestinian issue as a whole.

The depopulation of Gaza, the same analysts add, will be followed by scarring the 3 million Palestinians living in the occupied West Bank out of it and into Jordan.

"Israel applies a scorched land policy in Gaza to make it uninhabitable," al-Dehi said.

"It tries to do the same in the occupied West Bank, a policy met with strong opposition from Egypt which urges abidance by international law," he added.

Israel does not hide its plan to drive the people of Gaza out, including through what it describes as "voluntary migration", a term believed in Egypt to be used to disguise Gaza's ethnic cleansing.

Earlier this month, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reiterated his country's intentions to occupy Gaza and drive its people out on the road to implementing President Trump's plan.

Israeli far-right politicians view, meanwhile, Trump's coming to power as a good chance for getting rid of Palestinians in the West Bank and ending Palestinian statehood dreams once and for all.

Hemedti is the last in a series of figures to have demonstrated readiness to take in Gaza refugees in return for American perks, amid reports of countries like Indonesia and the breakaway Somali region of Somaliland demonstrating a similar desire in the past months.

The RSF chief's purported proposal comes as Israel steps up its campaign in Gaza, with a plan to occupy 75 percent of the Palestinian territory and squeeze its people in the remaining 25 percent, near the Egyptian border and the Mediterranean coast.

It also emerges a short time after the US imposed sanctions on the Sudanese army, after accusing it of using chemical weapons.

These developments, Palestinian analysts say, prove that there will always be a way for the US and Israel to carry out their plan for Gaza.

"The collective Arab system is at its weakest at present, while some Arab countries show readiness to serve their own interests at the expense of the Palestinians," Palestinian political analyst Tayseer al-Khateeb told TNA.

"These countries need to know, however, that if they allow people like Hemedti to do what he wants, Gaza as a model will be applied by Israel and the US to them in the future," he added.