Egypt Has Started Building A Walled Buffer Zone At Its Border With Gaza After Israel Insisted It Will Invade Rafah
Israel has denied it intends to push the 1.4 million Palestinians it forced into Rafah into Egypt, but the construction from Egypt’s side suggests that it is preparing for a worst case scenario.
Egypt has started building a walled buffer zone at its border with Gaza after Israel insisted it will invade Rafah.
Israel has denied it intends to push the 1.4 million Palestinians it forced into Rafah into Egypt.
However, the construction from Egypt’s side suggests that it is preparing for a worst case scenario.
Videos and satellite photos showed that Egypt has bulldozed a large area in the Sinai desert and is building a wall along its border with Gaza.
Anonymous Egyptian officials told the Wall Street Journal that it was building a “walled enclosure” that could accommodate more than 100,000 people.
A human rights organization said Egypt is creating a “high-security gated and isolated area” in the case of a mass exodus of Palestinians.
Egypt has publicly denied this, saying that it is building a logistics hub for aid.
Another Egyptian official told Al Jazeera that the buffer zone is to maintain the security of its borders and sovereignty over its territory.
Egypt’s president Abdel Fattah El-Sisi has said that Israel is attempting to forcibly expel Palestinians into Egypt.
Sisi has warned that this would threaten peace in the region, as well as set a precedent for Israel to forcibly expel Palestinians in the West Bank into Jordan.
