Hamas has called on Palestinians to stay in their homes after Israel issued sweeping evacuation orders for almost half of Gaza’s more than 2.3 million people ahead of an expected ground offensive.
The Hamas authority for refugee affairs today told residents in the north of the territory to “remain steadfast in your homes and to stand firm in the face of this disgusting psychological war waged by the occupation”.
Question: is it actually true that Israel doesn’t want Palestinians to leave via the southern border to Egypt? I’ve heard on the news twice (BBC Hardtalk and somewhere else I can’t recall now) that the opposite is true. From what I’ve heard, Israel wants the Palestinians to leave, but Egypt does not want to allow them into their country because it would be a huge burden to feed, house, and police a million+ angry refugees.
It also makes more sense from Israel’s point of view to get the Palestinians out of Gaza. Israel’s greatest danger is, and always has been, the opprobrium of the international community if they kill too many civilians. It would be a huge victory for Israel if the civilians all leave, which is why Hamas wants them to stay!
That’s correct. Egypt does not want to take the Palestinians.
Egypt wants to, but Israel keeps bombing the Palestinian side of the border and won’t agree to letting Egyptian aid in to clear it so people can escape from Israels attacks.
https://www.cnn.com/2023/10/13/middleeast/egypt-rafah-crossing-gaza-palestinians-mime-intl/index.html
article looks like Egyptian government just looked for an excuse to not help
Israel just want all Palestinian land, no matter how. If they leave, great. If they’re all dead, fine. All they care about is the land. Of course Israel would prefer them to just leave and not be their issue anymore, but they caused the issue driving Palestinians into Gaza in the first place, and could just as easily let them out again.
Israel unitarily pulled out of Gaza in the mid 2000s. If all they wanted was to take all the land they could do so.