Incensed by Israel's plan to 'conquer' Gaza, Egypt mulls military presence increase in Sinai

Israel's new plan to conquer the Gaza Strip and establish permanent presence in it is causing anger in Egypt, amid expectations that the move will trigger an increase in military build-up on the Egyptian side of the border with Gaza.

The Israeli plan, unveiled earlier this week during an Israeli cabinet meeting, will aim to clear northern and central Gaza of residents and push the war-devastated enclave's population of over 2 million into southern Gaza, near the border with Egypt's Sinai.

Squeezed in a humanitarian zone in this part of Gaza, the territory's population will then receive humanitarian aid under an Israeli pilot programme for the distribution of aid.

The programme, according to the Israeli government, will be implemented by two private American companies and will aim to tighten the noose around the Gaza-ruling Hamas and prevent the group from hijacking the aid for the benefit of its fighters.

Nevertheless, the new Israeli plan is causing concern in Egypt, which, together with Qatar, has been campaigning for a suspension of fighting and a long-term truce that ends the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza.

Egyptian Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty has rejected the new Israeli plan for conquering Gaza, calling on the international community to take decisive action against it.

"The international community needs to take action to put an end to this aggression and Israel's systematic policy of using hunger as a weapon against the Palestinian people," the Egyptian foreign minister said on 6 May.

Israel has been preventing the entry of humanitarian aid into Gaza since early March, driving the war-battered territory to the brink of famine.

The Israeli move has caused tens of thousands of tonnes of humanitarian and relief aid to accumulate at a logistical zone in Sinai, with some of the aid expiring, while the Palestinians are dying of hunger and thirst on the other side of the border.

Displacement fears

The Israeli plan for the occupation of Gaza practically puts into effect a similar one proposed by a group of Israeli army generals last year.

Known as the "Generals' Plan", this blueprint will drive the population of the territory towards the Egyptian border in the south and flatten northern and central Gaza with one aim: putting the thumbscrews on Hamas and leaving the Gaza-ruling group little space for manoeuvring, hiding or fighting.

This comes amid calls by Israel's far-right politicians for the reoccupation of Gaza, with the same politicians viewing Israel's 2005 unilateral disengagement and withdrawal from Gaza as a mistake.

Such a view was recently expressed by National Unity Party Chairman and former minister of defence Benny Gantz, who called the 2005 Gaza disengagement, which included the evacuation of the northern Gaza communities, the "greatest mistake".

He said Israel should have maintained a presence in Gaza to signal that the pre-1967 lines were "irrelevant".

Egypt calls for establishing a Palestinian state within the same lines, with East Jerusalem as its capital.

Nonetheless, the flattening of Gaza; unrelenting airstrikes on different sites in the territory; the upward spiral in human losses (over 50,000 deaths so far), and humanitarian conditions in the enclave, which keep worsening by the hour, just mean one thing: Gaza is no longer fit for living, which may force the people of the territory to seek ways to leave it.

While this paves the way for the implementation of US President Donald Trump's plan of taking over the territory and building it into a "Middle East Riviera", it causes deep concern in Egypt.

"Israel's current plan is to kill and maim the largest number of people in Gaza on the road to making life impossible in this territory," Ahmed Rakha, a retired Egyptian diplomat, who is a member of think tank, Egyptian Council for Foreign Affairs, told The New Arab.

"This is a systematic plan for forcing the people of the territory totally out of it," he added.

Egypt has been working hard to keep the prospect of displacing the people of Gaza, including into Sinai, at bay under fears that the depopulation of Gaza will entail the liquidation of the Palestinian issue as a whole, especially with Israel's current campaign in the occupied West Bank, one aiming at copying the Gaza model in this part of Palestine on the road to stifling Palestinian statehood efforts.

The populous Arab country has previously turned down demands by the US president to take in Gaza refugees.

Instead, it formulated a plan for the reconstruction of Gaza, without the displacement of its population, and rallied Arab and Islamic countries behind the same plan.

Growing border tension with Israel

Egyptian fears from the prospect of displacing the people of Gaza into Sinai, its north-eastern territory which shares borders with Israel and Gaza, explain Egyptian military build-up in the territory, even put this build-up into context.

Israeli politicians have complained against increased military deployments in Sinai, describing them as a "violation" of the 1979 Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty, the first between an Arab country and Israel, which puts limits on Egyptian troop presence in northern Sinai.

The Egyptians, meanwhile, accuse Israel of violating agreements it signed with their country, including a 2005 agreement that mandated the Palestinian Authority to patrol Gaza's side of the border with Sinai, by occupying this side.

An Egyptian group has recently published a video of what it described as growing Israeli military deployments along the border with Egypt, yet a new infringement of the peace treaty with the Arab country, which also limits Israeli military presence on the shared border with Egypt.

There are expectations now that the new Israeli plan for conquering Gaza and squeezing its population near the border with Egypt will increase tensions on this border, which may manifest itself in increased Egyptian security presence in Sinai.

Egypt clarified over and over in the past months that it would not allow the displacement of the Palestinians of Gaza to happen, in general, and at its own expense, in particular.

In late January, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi described the displacement of the people of Gaza as a form of "injustice" his country could not participate in doing.

"Egypt stands firmly against the displacement of the Palestinians into Sinai," Gen. Ibrahim al-Masri, a member of the Committee on Defence and National Security in the Egyptian parliament, told TNA.

"This is why it is taking the necessary measures to deter those who think they can mess with the security of Sinai in any manner," he added.