Arab states say Palestinians must stay on their land

Egypt opens border for aid not mass movement of people

AMMAN/ BEIRUT:

Calls for a humanitarian corridor or an escape route for Palestinians from Gaza as a conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas has escalated have drawn a blunt reaction from Arab neighbours.

Egypt, the only Arab state to share a border with Gaza, and Jordan, which is next to the Israeli-occupied West Bank, have both warned against Palestinians being forced off their land.

"This is the cause of all causes, the cause of all Arabs," Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi said on Thursday.

"It is important that the (Palestinian) people remain steadfast and present on their land." For Palestinians, the idea of leaving or being forced out of land where they want to forge a state carries echoes of the "Nakba", or "catastrophe", when many Palestinians fled their homes during the 1948 war that accompanied Israel's creation.

The head of the 22-member Arab League, Ahmed Aboul Gheit, urgently appealed to UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to condemn "this insane Israeli effort to transfer the population". The United States said this week it was talking to Israel and Egypt about the idea of safe passage for Gaza civilians.

Palestinians and Arab states say a deal should include the right of those refugees and their descendants to return, something Israel has always rejected.

In Khan Younis in the south of Gaza, Mariam al-Farra, a 36-year-old mother of two, said people displaced inside the enclave were crammed together without water, power or internet links. "People are just saying we are all going to Sinai - that we are going to be forcibly displaced," she said. "We have nothing to do with any of this.

Egypt says the Rafah crossing is open and they are trying to secure the delivery of humanitarian relief into Gaza, although this has been hampered by Israeli bombardments close to the border. Cairo has also indicated that the resolution of the issue through any mass exodus of Palestinians is unacceptable.

Opposition to new displacement of Palestinians runs deep in Egypt, where a peace treaty with Israel more than four decades ago secured an Israeli withdrawal from the Sinai Peninsula but never led to reconciliation on a popular level.

"Egyptian public opinion would overwhelmingly see this as a prelude to ethnic cleansing, forced displacement, basically expulsion, where it would be expected then that they just never would go back," said H A Hellyer, a senior associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute.

After an emergency Arab League meeting on Wednesday, Jordan's Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi said all Arab states agreed to confront any attempt to displace Palestinians from their homeland.

Turkey rejects exile of Palestinians, stands with Egypt

Turkey stands with Egypt in rejecting the exile of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip in the face of Israel's war with the Hamas militant group, Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said alongside his counterpart in Cairo on Saturday.

Fidan, on his first trip as minister to Egypt, said it is important to act to stop the conflict from spreading and to re-start peace talks centred on achieving a two-state solution for Israelis and Palestinians.

"We reject the policy of Palestinians' being removed from their homes in Gaza and exiled into Egypt. We are fully against it and stand with Egypt," Fidan said. "The loss of civilian life must be stopped regardless of which side they're on," he said.

"We see that some states try to justify Israel's attacks on Gaza as some sort of justifiable act. We invite Israel to stick to international law and humanitarian values."