Yves here. Korybko does not elaborate on the reasons for Egypt to reject taking refugees from Gaza. One is that, as Korybko points out, that Israel might not let them return. The reality is the point for Israel to push them across the border is to make sure they don’t come back.
The second is for Egypt not to facilitate ethnic cleansing. If you think Israel will stop if it succeeds with this gambit in Gaza, I have a bridge I’d like to sell you.
Third is the cost of supporting such a huge influx of refugees.
Fourth is that odds are high that both Hamas members and their allies would attack Israel from Egypt and could cause other trouble for the Egypt government.
This article does not contemplate whether other Arab states and Muslim allies would launch their own attack against Israel if Egypt did so.
By Andrew Korybko, a Moscow-based American political analyst who specializes in the global systemic transition to multipolarity in the New Cold War. He has a PhD from MGIMO, which is under the umbrella of the Russian Foreign Ministry. Originally published at his website
The situation is grim since there aren’t any reasons to expect Israel to voluntarily stop its ground operation, nor any indications as of yet that the Arab states are seriously considering another oil embargo against the West. The risk of a genocide in Gaza is therefore growing by the day, and with Egypt threatening to go to war if these refugees are pushed across its border and Israel likely abandoning this pressure campaign in response, over two million people face a very dire fate.
Egyptian Prime Minister Madbouly said earlier this week that his country was ready to “sacrifice millions of lives” in defense of its territory and to prevent regional conflicts from being resolved at its expense. This ominous remark was interpreted as signaling that Egypt is prepared to go to war as a last resort to stop a flood of Palestinian refugees from Gaza. Before proceeding, readers should review this analysis about “Egypt’s Dilemma: Facilitate Ethnic Cleansing Or Allow Possible Genocide” for background.
In brief, Egypt can either open the floodgates and facilitate the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from Gaza or keep its borders closed and therefore tacitly allow their possible genocide by Israel. The first option has obvious humanitarian arguments in its favor, while the counterarguments are that “Weapons of Mass Migration” could destabilize Egypt and Israel might never let those refugees return once they’re gone. As for the second option, the arguments and counterarguments are reversed, but the logic stands.
Judging by Madbouly’s latest remark, Egypt has decided to play an extremely high-stakes game in Gaza after publicly signaling a desire to go to war as a last resort to stop a flood of Palestinian refugees, but this could end in genocide in the worst-case scenario that it fails to get Israel to stop its bombings. About that, while Russia supports Israel’s right to defend itself from terrorist attacks like Hamas’ infamous one in early October, it’s against the self-professed Jewish State’s collective punishment of the Palestinians.
Interested readers can learn more about Russia’s policy of principled neutrality towards the latest Israeli-Hamas war here since it’s beyond the scope of the present piece, but the point in referencing it is to show how complicated the conflict is and why it’s spiraled out of control over the past month. Egypt was the first Arab state to recognize Israel, with whom it’s since cultivated close multidimensional ties, and it largely shares its neighbor’s security concerns about Muslim Brotherhood-linked Hamas.
At the same time, Egypt is also the most populous Arab state too and tried leading this group of countries during the middle of the Old Cold War, plus many of its people sympathize with their co-religionists in Palestine. These factors worsen the dilemma that it’s been plunged into by the latest conflict since it would prefer to keep those refugees out of its borders, especially since some might be Hamas sleeper cells, but it’s also under some pressure to immediately relieve their suffering as well.
President Sisi seemingly chose to prioritize Egypt’s national security and political interests over the Palestinians’ humanitarian ones, which explains why his Prime Minister just said what he did. It also deserves mentioning that Israel just confirmed the existence of a scandalous so-called “concept paper” that was previously reported on by The Grayzone. The influential think tank behind it proposed “resettling” all the Gazans in Egypt, or in other words, ethnically cleansing them.
According to Israeli website Ynet, Israel proposed bailing Egypt out of its international debts in exchange for that country allowing Palestinian refugees to flood into the country. The abovementioned “concept paper” coupled with this latest Israeli report add context to Madbouly’s remark. They enable observers to reframe them as an indirect public response to Tel Aviv’s efforts to resolve the Palestinian conflict at Egypt’s expense, which could entail considerable national security and political costs as explained.
With these factors in mind, particularly Egypt’s willingness to go to war to prevent a flood of Palestinian refugees, Israel will probably stop pressuring its neighbor to accept them since it’s not worth ruining ties with the largest Arab state. The self-professed Jewish State’s perception managers might then try to divide blame for the humanitarian crisis in Gaza caused by their government’s collective punishment of its people by claiming that it’s partially Cairo’s fault for not opening its border to save them.
If Israel’s ground operation continues as planned, then there’s a credible risk of genocide, which could only realistically be averted in the scenario that the Arab states agree on another oil embargo. This proposal was elaborated on here, but can be summarized as punishing Israel’s Western patrons with the intent of getting that bloc to coerce Tel Aviv into stopping its ground operation. It might still not succeed, and there might not be enough Arab unity to even try, but it’s the only realistic option available.
As it presently stands, the situation is grim since there aren’t any reasons to expect Israel to voluntarily stop its ground operation, nor any indications as of yet that the Arab states are seriously considering another oil embargo against the West. The risk of a genocide in Gaza is therefore growing by the day, and with Egypt threatening to go to war if these refugees are pushed across its border and Israel likely abandoning this pressure campaign in response, over two million people face a very dire fate.
Israel has proven itself impervious to global opinion so nobody should hope that any more pro-Palestinian protests will finally succeed in bringing an end to its ground operation. Instead, the case can be made that these demonstrations might have a better chance of getting the Arab states to seriously discuss another oil embargo or pressure Egypt to finally open its border in exchange for refugee aid. Once again, the primary dilemma is over facilitating ethnic cleansing or allowing genocide.
Since Israel isn’t expected to stop its ground operation even if it leads to genocide, Palestinian supporters at the civil society and state levels all across the world should defer to those people to see whether they prefer being genocided to make a political point or ethnically cleansed to save their lives. The best-case scenario of a ceasefire is increasingly unrealistic, and if there isn’t another oil embargo or an Arab pressure campaign on Egypt, then the Palestinians will probably be genocided.
Failure to consult them about their preferred fate in that event extends credence to claims that Arab states have exploited their cause for political reasons over the years and might therefore even think that there’s some benefit to be derived from over two million of these people being martyred by Israel. It’s the Palestinians’ own cause first and foremost, however, so they should be asked whether they want to die for this (and some might be proud to do so) or flee to Egypt to carry on their cause in exile.
If the Arab states either can’t agree on another oil embargo or the West fails to coerce Israel into stopping its ground operation in that event, then they might be influenced by pro-Palestinian protests into pressuring Egypt into finally opening its borders in exchange for refugee aid. Concerted pressure from these fellow states could succeed in saving over two million people from genocide, but at the expense of them being ethnically cleansed. It’s a terrible dilemma, but it shouldn’t be taboo to discuss.
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1 This is not a credible risk of genocide, as Andrew states, but a textbook case of genocide, as the Director of the New York Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights stated.
From a Machiavellian point of view, one may ask why any country (muslim or not) would risk the death of 1000s of its citizens & military to avoid the death of 1000s of citizens of another country?
And reasoning from self-centered national interests, why should oil-producing kill their bottom lines to save 1000s of citizens of somebody else’s country?
So nobody is going to come out to help those poor Palestinian kids.
2 I also fear that WW3 is the ‘West against the Rest’.
In this war, the West just opened another battlefield. While Russia mops up the Ukrainian battlefield, a new front has opened in Gaza, but has found no takers.
The Empire is drowning under the weight of its hypocrisies, and it is dangerous to approach a drowning man, especially if he has nukes. So countries tend to stand at a distance, and watch the last convulsions of a dying Empire, and not really knowing what is the next/best step forward.
Ten years ago. Sisi led a coup against the Muslim Brotherhood- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013_Egyptian_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat
BTW – Morsi was democratically elected.
Given this, does anyone believe that Sisi will let Hamas in? He and Hamas are literally enemies. And I am not talking about man-in-the-street here but the person calling the shots.
There is probably a certain number of dollars that can get a deal done but that deal would essentially move the Palestinians from one concentration camp to another.
I feel like the words lost their meaning entirely. Fighting in dense urban environment causes civilian casualties. To take Mariupol as an example (with the pre-war population 400k), the Russians were not intentionally targeting civilians (mostly fellow Russian-speakers) and certainly did not plan a genocide but rather wanted to take the city quickly and free up their forces, and still the likely number of civilian victims is tens of thousands (per geolocated new graves https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-war-erasing-mariupol-499dceae43ed77f2ebfe750ea99b9ad9). You can do your own math.
geolocated new graves in the country that denies it’s own losses proves nothing as to who the dead are.
Israeli officials have invoked the precedent of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to justify their actions in discussions with American officials. That is far, far different than the Russian’s approach to Mariupol.
Unlike most here, I actually know people with relatives in Mariupol.
Enough to say that they are all-in.
For Russia.
I am so tired of these false parallels being used to excuse the Israeli genocide. The Russians opened up human corridors for the Mariupol population and it was the Ukrainians who refused to let the civilians leave. Even in this environment, the Russians were as careful as they could be in fighting the Azov (the most extremist group of the Ukrainian army) and were not carpet bombing the city. The majority of the fighters on the Russian side were actually from the LPR. The Ukrainian military is also an extremely well armed and experienced fighting force.
Gaza is an open air concentration camp controlled by the Israeli apartheid state, with the Israelis being the ones not letting the Gazan population out (unless they want to be ethnically cleansed to Egypt, an option correctly removed by Egypt). The Israelis are carpet bombing / shelling whole residential areas and even mosques and hospitals. The civilian casualties in a few weeks in Gaza are estimated at around 10,000, and will of course in reality be higher than that number. Hamas is a not a state-supported fighting force but a poorly armed force that fights against the extremely well armed IDF.
From your own reference (which is Western MSM) “More than 10,000 new graves now scar Mariupol” over an 8 month period. This is extremely misleading as in a city of 400,000 people will die of many non-war causes, for example the UK death rate is approx. 1% of the population and the Ukrainian remaining population will tend to be much older than the UK given the amount of economic emigration. The AP piece of course does not mention this as it would not align with its messaging. At the latest count the Office for the High Commissioner of Refugees (OHCR) has counted about 10,000 civilian casualties in the 18 months of war, the actual count will of course be higher but this shows a very high amount of restraint by the Russian forces.
There is no parallel between a war between two states and a state carpet bombing and shelling its own open air prison. The AP reference also shows its manipulation of the facts by not including a single interview with a representative of Russia and continuous usage of loaded and extreme language.
A minor correction: majority of the “Russians” taking Mariupol where DPR, not LNR. Mariupol is the second largest city of Donetsk, and much bigger portion of the “invading” forces has been born, lived, studied or worked in Mariupol than of the “defending ” forces which had been deployed from western Ukraine.
Which leads to a funny anecdote: many Ukrainian units acted according to the book and removed all road sign in the days following the Russian invasion – resulting in many of the same units getting constantly lost, but causing no trouble for the advancing DPR troops who were fighting on their home neighborhoods.
We really haven’t heard much propaganda about Russian-caused civilian casualties since Bucha, and even there it’s disputed who killed the people and where the bodies came from, and the casualty figures weren’t anywhere near what’s happening currently in Gaza.
Since the pro-Ukrainian propaganda has been incessant from Western media, if there were actually a lot of civilian casualties, I’m quite sure we would have heard an exaggerated version of that story many, many times.
Since we haven’t heard that, I’m assuming that Russia has managed to keep civilian casualties to a minimum.
I would summarize it this way. Resettlement in Egypt , in the south, as opposed to, on a former occasion, resettlement in the east.
Of course, when the turn of the West Bank comes, it will be resettlement in the east.
History does not repeat itself but it rhymes.
Israel has become a nation addicted to danger and war, so there will never be stable borders around it. As long as there is a “greater Israel” in prospect, the urge to take adjacent territory by force will continue, especially if there are resistance fighters lobbing rockets over each new border. The solution is to end the war psychosis in Israel. Only then can there be a durable peace.
I disagree with Andrew Korybko’s framing of the dilemma facing Egypt. It is not a simple matter of humanitarian re-settlement vs genocide. That’s the equivalent of Israel saying “I will kill these people or else you resettle them in Egypt.”
First, let us deal with what the so-called resettlement option means to the Palestinians and to the wider Arab and even wider Islamic world. It means Nakba 2.0, actually 2.5 as the 1967 War produced a mini Nakba. What are we talking about?
In 1948-49, the newly formed Zionist state of Israel intentionally ethnically cleansed 750,000 Palestinians from about 500 villages and towns. This event is an original sin that remains a festering wound in Palestinian, Arab, Iranian, Muslim political consciousness.
So, the real humanitarian solution is NOT to empty Gaza of its 2.2 million Palestinians (many of whom are themselves refugees or the descendants of refugees from the 1948 and 1967 expulsions), but to STOP Israel’s genocidal war!
Prior to October 7th, 500 trucks per DAY passed through Rafah on the Egyptian border into Gaza as part of normal flow of trade. At last count some 60 or so supply trucks were allowed in by Israel over 3 WEEKS.
Israel maintains a checkpoint on the Egyptian border, where all shipments to Gaza must be unloaded, inspected, and reloaded. Then the shipments are returned to the Rafah crossing where they are reloaded onto Palestinian trucks for shipment into Gaza.
In the name of a humanitarian solution, Egypt should bypass the Israeli checkpoint and allow the hundreds of relief convoys backed up in Egypt into Gaza. It will need to warn the Israelis that if they interfere with these shipments, it will mean war. Egypt can probably elicit Turkey’s military backing for its warning to Israel.
In this formula, Egypt can take the first step to preventing Nakba 3.0.
Meanwhile, the oil producers can threaten to cut off oil and gas shipments to the West, the very countries making possible Israel’s genocidal war on the hapless people of Gaza.
Talk of “resettlement” under the guise of a humanitarian solution is a nonstarter to Palestinians and their allies around the world. They’ve been down that road before.
I am by no means a supporter of Israel as they are in a position to be a higher moral authority here, but the whole retracing of the problem only to 1948 is still not a good starting point. Many Jews were forced to leave Russian up to the 1920s and many left for Israel. They didn’t have the right to kick Palestinians off their lands but it just shows how complicated the situation is.
I have many conversations with Jewish friends about the situation in Gaza. To stay on friendly terms, we always end the conversation with an agreement — “it’s complicated.” I am starting to get tired of this this because it seems like an evasion. The past is complicated, but the future is simpler, it seems to me if we think clearly. When digging a hole — for reasons that are often quite complicated — things get much simpler once you stop digging.
While historical context is always valuable we need to move forward and not let sunk costs–i.e. legitimate grief over past horrors — prevent sound decisions now about the future. I do believe “sunk cost fallacy” is one of those cognitive biases that is perpetuating this insanity. Pointing out and punishing past behaviors, e.g. war crimes and terrorism, also seems unproductive. What counts is future costs and benefits of alternative courses of action, and continuing the horror seems to have no upside for Israel. I mean, moving two million Gazans a mere10 miles South into the Sinai (a pipe dream) does not solve Israel’s problem, while it creates a huge problem for Egypt. With each passing day, the law of diminishing returns says that incremental costs of more bombing and death will at some point exceed the future incremental benefits deterrence (which are probably exaggerrated). This point has almost certainly been reached. Accordingly, I do question this basic assumption of Korybko’s essay:
Israel is not acting in isolation but with the tacit, conditional –and absolutely necessary–support of the United States. Already, Biden’s political position is increasingly tenuous. Whether he realizes it yet or not, the limit of America’s patience for Israel’s slaughter innocents in this horrific death camp has been reached. Israeli’s may take this in stride (I doubt it) but Americans–particularly Biden’s minority base–won’t long sit still for hi-def photos of bombed Palestinian children streamed around the world on the internet daily.
Bernie Sanders, a Biden confidante, yesterday called for a cease fire on the Senate Floor, a warning sign to Israel that U.S. patience is running out. I think Biden-Blinken calculated that they would give Israel space to get its pound of flesh, but soon Israel will once again be forced by them to accept a cease fire and ultimately renew peace talks.
Israel will be forced to accept the 2-state solution, as Sanders also insisted upon as a “condition of our future solidarity with Israel.” The peace talks will, of course, drag on with no resolution. The big question for me, is whether Israel will also be forced–as Thomas Friedman has proposed–that Israel commit to a cessation of expansion of West Bank settlements.
If Israel does these things, I think the situation will get much less “complicated.”
Why Hamas has allowed that Israeli checkpoint on the border with Egypt to remain, and not raised it from the face of earth?
I agree, the calls for resettling Palestinians into refugee camps in Egypt/Jordan was so insulting. I saw recently one of the few remaining journalists in Gaza interviewing families who stayed in the north, asking why they hadnt tried to move south. Many shrugged, said they were dead anyway, and they preferred to die in their homes, than in a tent in the Sinai.
Whats happening in the West Bank is worse in some ways.
I feel like Im watching replays of the eradication /ethnic cleansing the long marches etc, of Native Americans, Australian Aborigines, the Warsaw Ghetto, Rwanda, Balkans, etc etc etc (the list is endless)
The other question concerns the author’s suggestion that in the middle of being bombed into oblivion the Palestinians in Gaza (but not Palestinians elsewhere) be asked what of two bad options they prefer.
How, pray, in any practical sense does Andrew Korybko propose such an exercise be carried out?
Does he propose a time out for Gallup to go in and conduct an opinion poll on this basis? On what planet does he see Israel and the gangsters in the US and the rest of the US vassal States in the Collective West – currently rushing legislation through its Parliaments outlawing any criticism of Israel with punitive jail sentences and fines on its own citizens – allowing such a time out?
Not when there’s $trillions in on and off shore gas and oil up for grabs.
Besides which how does this Hobson’s choice which Korybko presents square with the stated position of his own US Government vis a vis a two State solution? Ethnic cleansing or genocide is a false choice even in the context of the US stated position.
We expect and deserve better on naked capitalism than such shoddy shifting of responsibility from the aggressor to the victims.
Methinks that this article is part of a campaign to force Egypt to accept all those Gazans. So if I understand this guy’s logic, because cruel things happened to the Israelis, they are forced into being genocidal maniacs and the only way out is for Egypt to open up the gates and accept all those 2.3 million people in order to save their lives and if they do not, it is all Egypt’s fault. Did I get that right? Say, does anybody remember how at the Nuremberg Tribunals when the Nazis argued that the genocide that they did was not their fault but was the fault of the Allies for not letting them ship all those people to Madagascar like they wanted to? No, me neither.
As for the mechanics of this plan, the Israelis are demanding that a massive tent city be built in the middle of the Sinai desert to house these 2.3 million people. Israel will also take a chunk of land on the Egyptian side of the border as a sort of “security zone”. I would imagine that Israeli aircraft and drones would be constantly flying over Egyptian airspace to keep an eye on this camp as well as to bomb it from time to time and if anything happens, they will bomb some Egyptian target as punishment. It will not be Israel paying for this but they expect countries like Saudi Arabia and Qatar to do so for like forever. And I would guess that with this precedent, that before long Egypt will have to expand this tent city in the middle of a desert to take in the other five million Palestinians from the West bank as well.
Of course it is only a matter of time until Israel will want to take back the Sinai because, you know, Big J promised them this land as well so once again these people would be pushed out with bombs into Egypt proper and beyond. I am afraid the author assumes that as Israel is being protected by the west, that nothing can be done to Israel such as boycotts – which will be made illegal – or oil embargoes which is too early to tell yet. Countries like China may get their oil but western countries may be left spinning in the wind. It’s a good thing that they all have robust economies like they did in the early 70s. After reading all this, it looks like I picked the wrong week to give up both crack and meth.
And of course it’s simply not credible to construct a temporary city for millions of people; sanitation alone would require extensive planning to avoid an epidemic of cholera. This is hard to get right even at a small scale; in the midst of a crisis it is unthinkable.
There’s usually a very good reason that a place is sparsely inhabited. My first question regarding the “relocate them to the Sinai” scheme is “where is the water supply for x-million people?”
My educated guess of an answer to that question is that there isn’t anywhere near the necessary volume of water there, and if there is it will be gone in a matter of days. This critical little detail should be well known to the Egyptians, Palestinians, Israelis, and Saudis for sure, and probably other major contributors (USA and UK in particular) too. Who, therefore, would be responsible for supplying the Gazans with water? The Israelis sure as hell won’t do it, and I would bet that they would attempt to destroy any water supply (or supplied water) that the Palestinians use.
Why nobody turns the tables on?
Why is Israel not allowing civilians to move in all those empty villages around Gaza, to then deal with Hamas in empty Gaza? Why should Egypt or other Arab states be responsible when it is their responsibility, as occupiers, to deal with the civilian population in their charge? Would any country accept all the US inmates?
I would guess that with this precedent, that before long Egypt will have to expand this tent city in the middle of a desert to take in the other five million Palestinians from the West bank as well.
And after that will come the crowning operation: expelling the 2 million or so Palestinians who (still) are Israeli citizens within Israel proper.
Those Palestinians will be even more subject to discrimination, surveillance, and repression after the successful ethnic cleansing in Gaza and in the West Bank. (Jewish) Israelis, surmising that their Arab compatriots, fearful of suffering the same fate as their brethren in Palestine, might be motivated to launch a desperate, all-out fight for survival, will then endeavour to pre-empt such an upheaval — and therefore deport (with attendant massacres) the remaining Palestinian minority.
Thanks for this post. Why should I blame Egypt for protecting its borders instead of Isr’s govt for Gaza genocide?
It’s not like the US is protecting the actual national borders, as opposed to nebulous but imperial-mercantile “interests” everywhere else in the world. And killing millions of US citizens by murderous “public health” policies, because-markets-go-die “economics,” makes hypocritical “responsibility to protect” excuses just an obvious sham. (Implicit in the notion that Egypt ought to “accept” 2million Gaza Palestinians is the notion that Egypt has the R2P here.)
Wait. Are you saying that as Biden cannot even protect US borders, that he is criticizing Egypt for protecting theirs? :)
Agreed. The refrain to any complaints about Egyptian inaction should always be “as the occupying power, Israel is solely responsible for humanely caring for and resettling Gazans (and West Bank Palestinians) displaced by its actions.” To propose anything else is just enabling Israel’s ongoing crimes against humanity.
I don’t think Egypt is playing a game and the implications in the framing of this piece is not pleasant. Russia doesn’t want to get involved in two wars at the same time, and this may influence Korybko’s stance. The implication fringed here is that because Egypt does not assist Israel with its ethnic cleansing, at a huge geopolitical expense, it is implicated in its genocide.
The argument seems to be that if an intruder forcibly ejects me from my home, it’s my neighbor’s fault for not taking me in.
It’s worse than that. The argument is that the intruder wants to get rid of you by murdering you if your neighbor doesn’t take you in and furthermore the intruder also wants to pass responsibility for your murder off onto your neighbor in the practical sense that he or she could have prevented your death by taking you in.
Rubbish of course, your neighbor may or may not be accused of being callous, but the responsibility for your murder is squarely on the intruder and the intruder alone. Nevertheless, that’s exactly what Israel is trying to pull off in the world of public opinion by putting Egypt on the hot seat, if it doesn’t absorb all Palestinians.
Or insinuating that you might not be entitled to the same rights as others, that you might be….less than human, because your neighbors didn’t take you in so your home could be exproropriated.
The additional irony being that Jewish refugees were none too welcome in much of the world, not so long agom
Captain Obvious here. Would an oil embargo be necessary if Iran (which seems to be the ultimate target in all this brouhaha) shuts down the Strait of Hormuz? Will the genocide in Gaza rouse up Hezbollah? I know there is a Shia/Sunni divide, but I would think any reaction along Israel’s northern border would cause all bets to be off.
Reminds me of 1971 indo-pak war. India went to war to stem flood of refugees. Soviet union was able to control US intervention in bay of Bengal. Arab countries should kick out US military from it’s soil. That might be more potent than oil embargo.
U.S. and Saudi military are the only thing keeping Bahrain’s rulers in power.
In March 2011, Saudi and UAE troops and Kuwaiti gunboats entered Bahrain and crushed the budding democracy movement.
The U.S. Fifth Fleet has its headquarters in Bahrain, so the other Gulf monarchies could not have moved without getting Obama’s consent. Obama’s fingerprints are all over this one.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Bahraini_uprising
Egypt is being set up as the fall guy…Egypt is to blame for the genocide Israel carries out !!
Implicit in thinking Egypt should take in all the Palestinians, to prevent their murder, is acceptance that Israel has every right to claim the Gaza Strip as its property, and every right to evict – by any means necessary –
the ‘tenants’…
Unable to restrain Israel, shift responsibility for Israel’s slaughter of Palestinians onto Egypt…
Far be it for a lowly dweeb such as me to understand American foreign policy, but it seems like the guys of The Duran have a much better grasp of what should have been done:
Biden White House Israel-Hamas war, diplomacy failure
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oj-PMDmK9jI
But I have to agree with their conclusion – I don’t think the Blinken/Nuland/Sullivan nexus is capable of that level of diplomacy. They have demonstrated an even lower capability than the Cheney/Powell/Rice nexus from the Iraq war which is quite frankly scary when all is considered. W was not engaged with proxy wars with the nuclear armed superpowers.
Instead, their handling of this reminds me of an old National Lampoon joke:
If You Don’t Buy This Book, We’ll Kill This Dog!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/If_You_Don%27t_Buy_This_Book,_We%27ll_Kill_This_Dog!
I just don’t see how this holds up for the year or more that Israel wants to reduce Gaza.
And wow, in the amount of time it took to post this comment, that Wikipedia page has been deleted!
Let’s try this one or this one:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/106214.If_You_Don_t_Buy_This_Book_We_ll_Kill_This_Dog_
As a resident of the Southwest United States, I can’t help but think it strange how attached they (Arabs and Jews) are to this minuscule chunk of barren land they inhabit. Are they aware how much similar land there is in other parts of the world that isn’t fought over at all?
Some generation will eventually say hey, why are we fighting over this? If we want land there is a lot of desert in other areas of this world we could probably settle with little difficulty. We stay here and risk death for a land with no jobs or infrastructure anyways.
I’m glad that you have volunteered the Southwestern USA to become the New Palestine.
Since you do not attach yourself to mere territory, I trust that you have already taken steps to relocate. Or would you rather learn a new language, and adopt a new religion?
More seriously, though: have you ever been there? What makes you think it’s so devoid of value? Do you know, or are just another ignorant foreigner, making assumptions about matters which are beyond your ken?
Well there is always Neom as a shining desert model for tent city dwellers to aspire to. $5.6 billion to house 90k people, so for 2.2 million people minus “wastage” that comes to …
This isn’t a moral dilemma that can be dropped on a neighbouring country in an attempt to duck responsibility, it’s moral blackmail. Egypt should not succumb to the pressure, and be prepared to defend itself.
More security issues for Egypt:
1. Egypt is not allowed, under the treaty, to keep more than small forces in Sinai. So how would they keep security? If Egypt bolsters security, they break the treaty. If they don’t bolster security, they’ll be blamed for terrorism.
2. If the Palestinians move to Sinai, then Israel will inevitably bomb them in Sinai. Because that’s what they always do. Is Egypt supposed to allow this?
3. In the last few decades, Egypt has painstakingly improved relations with the nomadic Bedouin of Sinai, whose lands and way of life now enjoy some protection. Sinai is not “terra nullius.” Why should these nomadic indigenous people of Sinai lose their lands because of Israel’s war?
4. Egypt fills most of its domestic energy needs from oil and gas from the Sinai region. Security risks in Sinai would endanger the livelihoods of everybody in Egypt.
5. How could any gov’t continue to hold power in Egypt, if they permitted the Israelis to use the Palestinians refugees as the spearhead of what would be, in effect, an Israeli invasion of Egypt? Popular unrest aside, there could be a military coup, if Sisi goes soft on this.
It is clear that the only sensible policy for Egypt is absolute refusal. A soft policy would lead to war anyway.
On the other hand, can Egypt afford war? The Egyptian people are already hungry because of the stupid Ukraine War. The currency has sagged, inflation rages. The Egyptian armed forces require American-sourced ammunition and parts. Tourism is a crucial source of foreign currency earnings, and war kills tourism.
Back in 2005, I spent a month in Egypt, as a tourist, except I went to see the modern places, not the ancient ones. I was quite impressed by the industriousness and ingenuity of the people of that country. It personally angers me to see Egypt getting dragged into Israel’s crap.
For over forty years, the Egyptians have honoured their treaty commitments. The Egyptians haven’t started a war in over half a century. They’ve mostly stayed out of the decade-long civil war next door in Libya. Today’s Egypt is a truly pacific country, but look how they get treated! They go hungry because of European BS, and now the world expects Egypt to cede territory because of Israeli BS.
I wish the Egyptians had lots of nukes.
It is now clear that the original plan was to ethnically cleansed Gaza by forcing Egypt to allow resettlement in Sinai. There’s the Israeli plan published and Blinken’s first trip to the region that started in Egypt. The threat behind it was ethnically cleanse Gaza and make Egypt accept it or genocide inside Gaza. The plan failed because Egypt cannot do that. It’s not practically or politically feasible.
That Sisi predictably refused has caused a lot of problems with high potential for more, cascading problems. That DC and Tel Aviv had a terrible Plan A that was bound to fail and now realistic Plan B is not surprising but leaves us in the current situation.
At the human level this is the greatest tragedy of a century almost a quarter complete and already full of tragedy. At the level of international politics this is an unforced error by the US of incredible proportions. It’s now in a situation where it must aid and abet clear genocide or abandon its most established proxy or face the potential of regional war it is not in a position to win clearly or on a timeline that fits its doctrine or on a timeline that fits domestic politics.
Israel’s choices are actually worse. So whether this was a grand strategy gambit or Hamas taking an opportunity or even a poorly conceived false flag by Netanyahu is immaterial. The end result is nothing but bad news for the US and Israel, especially since they clearly don’t have a real plan except ethnically cleansed Gaza and resettlement in Sinai.