Egypt has declared it will not tolerate the mass displacement of Palestinians and what it has described as genocide, continuing to escalate its criticism of the Israeli offensive in Gaza, while thousands of Gaza City residents defied Israeli orders to leave.
“Displacement is not an option and is a red line for Egypt, and we will not allow it to happen,” Egyptian Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty said in Nicosia.
“Displacement means the liquidation and end of the Palestinian cause, and there is no legal, moral, or ethical basis for evicting people from their homeland,” Abdelatty said, according to Reuters.
His comments are consistent with Egypt’s toughening of its language this year regarding Israel’s conduct in the enclave bordering Egypt, despite working with Qatar and the United States to try to broker a ceasefire in the nearly two-year-old war.
Repeating accusations of genocide leveled by the Egyptian leadership against Israel in recent months, he added: “What is happening on the ground is far beyond imagination. A genocide is taking place, with mass killings of civilians and an artificial famine created by the Israelis,” Abdelatty said.
Israel has previously steadfastly denied that its actions in Gaza constitute genocide and maintain that they are justified in self-defense. It is pursuing a case at the International Court of Justice in The Hague accusing it of genocide, which Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has condemned as “outrageous.”
Israel launched its attack on the Gaza Strip in October 2023, after fighters from Hamas, the Palestinian militant group that controls the territory, attacked southern Israel, killing 1,200 people and taking 250 hostages back to Gaza. Since then, more than 64,000 Palestinians have been killed, Gaza health authorities say, with much of the densely populated enclave reduced to ruins and its residents facing a humanitarian crisis.
Israel launched an offensive in Gaza City on August 10, in what Netanyahu calls a plan to defeat Hamas militants in the part of Gaza where Israeli troops fought hardest in the initial phase of the war. It now controls about 40% of Gaza City, a military spokesman said Thursday.
Much of Gaza City was devastated in the first weeks of the war, between October and November 2023. Around a million people lived there before the war, and hundreds of thousands are believed to have returned to live in the ruins, especially since Israel ordered people to leave other areas and launched offensives elsewhere.
Antonio Albanese and Graziella Giangiulio
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