Abdel Fattah el-Sisi says ‘displacement of the Palestinian people is an injustice’ after US president repeats call for Egypt and Jordan to accept Gaza residents.
President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi has said Egypt will not participate in the displacement of Palestinians, days after United States President Donald Trump suggested that Arab countries take in Palestinians from the war-torn Gaza Strip.
“Regarding what is being said about the displacement of Palestinians, it can never be tolerated or allowed because of its impact on Egyptian national security,” el-Sisi told a press conference on Wednesday.
“The deportation or displacement of the Palestinian people is an injustice in which we cannot participate,” he said.
Almost all of Gaza’s 2.2 million residents have been displaced at least once since Israel launched its war on the territory in October 2023 in response to a Hamas-led attack on southern Israel.
After the Israel-Hamas ceasefire took effect earlier this month, Trump touted a plan to “clean out” the Gaza Strip and relocate its residents to Jordan and Egypt. He returned to the idea this week, calling for Palestinians to move to “safer” locations such as Egypt or Jordan.
Moving Gaza’s inhabitants could be done “temporarily, or could be long term”, he said.
But the idea of relocating Palestinians has long been rejected by Palestinians and regional countries, who say it would undermine the notion of Palestinian statehood and foment instability in the Middle East.
Jordan’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Ayman Safadi has also rejected Trump’s suggestion, saying “Jordan is for Jordanians and Palestine is for Palestinians”.
Fear of displacement
El-Sisi said his government would work with the Trump administration to achieve peace between Israel and Palestine “that is based on the two-state solution”.
“The solution… is the establishment of a Palestinian state,” el-Sisi said. “The solution is not to remove the Palestinian people from their place.”
Displacement has been a recurrent theme in Palestinian history and inhabitants of the Gaza Strip fear that if they leave, they may never be allowed to return.
Since the start of Israel’s 15-month war on Gaza, Arab countries have repeatedly warned against any plans to push Palestinians into neighbouring countries, saying such a move would be reminiscent of the Nakba in 1948, when hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were forcibly displaced during the fighting that surrounded the creation of the Israeli state.
Egypt and Jordan have peace agreements with Israel and also support the creation of a Palestinian state in the occupied West Bank, Gaza and east Jerusalem. They fear that the permanent displacement of Gaza’s population could make a future state harder to realise.
Egypt and Jordan are key US allies in the Middle East and recipients of US aid. The US’s $1.3bn of annual military assistance to Egypt was exempted from a US funding freeze to global aid programmes this week.
