Category: Egypt

Trump Calls for 1,500,000 Gazans to Be Moved to Egypt and Jordan

A proposal that deserves serious consideration.

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Trump has described Gaza as a “real mess” and a “demolition site.” He wants two-thirds of the population in Gaza — 1.5 million out of a total of 2.2 million people — to be removed and resettled in Jordan and Egypt.The proposal is startling, but deserves serious consideration. More on his proposal can be found here: “Trump: Jordan and Egypt should take more Palestinians from Gaza,” Jerusalem Post, January 

US President Donald Trump said that Jordan and Egypt should take in more Palestinians from Gaza, when he spoke to reporters on Saturday.

Trump said he spoke about the matter with Jordan’s King Abdullah on the phone earlier in the day and told him that the Gaza Strip is currently a “real mess.”

He said that he told King Abdullah during the call, “I’d love for you [Jordan] to take on more because I’m looking at the whole Gaza strip right now, and it’s a mess, it’s a real mess. I’d like him to take people.”

King Abdullah relies heavily on American aid, which in recent years has made Jordan the third-highest recipient of such aid, after Israel and Egypt (and excluding the extraordinary sums given to Ukraine, which are likely to soon end). It would be difficult for him to refuse Trump’s request; he might have to agree to taking in about a quarter of that number, about 375,000, with Egypt, a much larger country, taking in the rest — 1,125,000.

With only 700,000 people remaining in Gaza after 1.5 million were transferred to Jordan and Egypt, the reduced numbers will make it much harder for Hamas, as a consequence of this transfer, to continue to be a threat to Israel. And with Gaza’s population so greatly reduced, the IDF’s task of locating and killing Hamas terrorists will be made much easier. Is it any wonder that Smotrich and Ben Gvir welcomed Trump’s proposal?

Trump has, in his first week in office, put a hold on all foreign aid, except for military aid to Israel and Egypt. He should make clear to General El-Sisi that he expects to continue to exempt Egypt from the general withholding of aid as long as Egypt shows a willingness to accept Gazans for resettlement. Jordan, like all recipients of American foreign aid, except Israel and Egypt, has just had its aid frozen; Trump could also make clear to King Abdullah that restoring aid to Jordan will depend on his willingness to take in a few hundred thousand Gazans.

The proposal could be presented to the world as what it, in fact, is meant to be: a humanitarian enterprise, helping Gazans out of their current misery, though it would bring geopolitical benefits to Israel as well.

The humanitarian aspect would be clear: Gazans who are now living in tents in what is a vast “demolition site” and hardly able to move through the piles of rubble that we see every night on the news, would be moved to the safety and much greater comfort of homes newly built for them in Egypt and Jordan, which would be paid for, in Trump’s calculations, not by the Americans, but by the fabulously rich Arab states of the Gulf — Saudi Arabia and the UAE. Would Jordan and Egypt be seen to reject helping their Palestinian brothers? And could the two richest of the Arab states, that each possess trillion-dollar sovereign wealth funds, refuse to pay for the building of those 1.5 million prefabricated homes that could be quickly erected? And to sweeten the pot, and overcome any reluctance to take part, Trump could perhaps increase his economic — but not military — aid to both Jordan and Egypt.

Here's how Trump put his proposal:

“You’re talking about a million and a half people, and we just cleaned out that whole thing,” Trump said. “I don’t know, something has to happen, but it’s literally a demolition site right now. Almost everything’s demolished and people are dying there, so I’d rather get involved with some of the Arab nations and build housing in a different location where I think they could maybe live in peace for a change.”

This is one of those Trump surprises that at first glance seem so crazy, but then, the more you think about them, the more sense they make.

Hamas: Suddenly Popular in Egypt

Is there something Hamas Nazis did lately that inspired Egyptians?

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SEE: https://www.frontpagemag.com/hamas-suddenly-popular-in-egypt/; republished below in full, unedited, for informational, educational, & research purposes:

For decades, Hamas was not popular in Egypt. It was seen, rightly, as the local branch, in “Palestine,” of the Muslim Brotherhood. And the Muslim Brotherhood has been fought by every Egyptian regime since that of King Farouk. Gamal Abdel Nasser fought the Brotherhood. After Anwar Sadat, once a Brotherhood supporter, signed the Camp David Accords with Israel in 1979, the Brotherhood called for his overthrow. Sadat crushed the Brotherhood, and for that, he was assassinated in 1981 by the Tanzim al-Jihad, an Islamic group allied to the Brotherhood. Hosni Mubarak also fought the Brotherhood during his 30 years of rule (1981-2011).

After he was overthrown in a popular uprising, a caretaker regime took over, quickly followed by the first truly democratic election in Egypt’s history.  Held in 2012, Mohamed Morsi, a member of the Freedom and Justice Party that was affiliated with the Brotherhood, was elected President. A year later, he was ousted in a coup d’etat by General Abdelfattah Al-Sisi, whose regime has continued to fight the Muslim Brotherhood, and naturally, it has also opposed Hamas. Most Egyptians have been inculcated with the belief that Hamas, as a part of the MB, is a danger to Egypt’s wellbeing. That is, they were ready to believe the worst of Hamas — until the last few months.

More on the sea change in Egyptian popular attitudes toward Hamas since October 7 can be found here: “Egyptians used to hate Hamas. Now they love them.” Elder of Ziyon, March 5, 2024:

The Fikra Forum of the Washington Institute asked Egyptians in November/December what they thought of Hamas after the October 7 massacres.

While we had seen other polls showing broad approval of Hamas’ terrorist attacks in the Arab world, this one is especially interesting because it compares Egyptian attitudes of Hamas after October 7 with their historic disapproval of the group.

The turnaround in Egyptian attitudes towards Hamas is stunning.

In 2020, 73% of Egyptians viewed Hamas negatively and 23% positively. That has now flipped to 75% who now approve of Hamas compared to only 21% who disapprove….

Egyptians think that Hamas is the only group that risks its members fighting Israel; the other groups are just blowhards. There is no bravery in lobbing rockets from a distance. That is why Hamas is so popular: its willingness to martyrdom in its zeal to murder Jews up close.

The poll also found that 94% of Egyptians don’t believe that Hamas killed civilians on October 7.  This is in line with Palestinian polls that showed that over 90% also don’t believe that Hamas committed any war crimes on that date….

How did Hamas go from being deeply disliked by almost three-quarters of Egyptians, to being applauded by three-quarters of them? In 2020, 73% of Egyptians viewed Hamas negatively and 23% positively. But after Hamas’ atrocities on October 7 and the war with Israel that has followed, everything has flipped. Nearly three quarters of Egyptians who previously had a negative view of Hamas now have a positive view. What happened? On October 7, 3,000 Hamas operatives pushed their way into Israel, where both at the site of the Re’im dance party, and at more than 20 kibbutzim, they managed to rape, torture, mutilate, and murder Israeli men, women, and children. Babies were beheaded; children were burnt alive; girls were gang-raped, tortured, mutilated, and murdered, the breasts sliced off women and used by Hamas “fighters” to play catch, the genitalia were cut off men and their eyes were gouged out; children were murdered in front of their parents, and parents in front of their children. This is what Hamas did. And Egyptians did not recoil from the horror. Instead Hamas’ ability to inflict terrible damage on Israeli civilians caused the group soar in Egyptians’ estimation.

But, some will say, the Egyptians knew nothing about the atrocities. They only claimed to know that Hamas had attacked the IDF. In the poll, 94% of Egyptians said they didn’t believe that there were any Israeli civilians who were attacked on October 7. Don’t take that poll’s results at face value. They are claiming that disbelief because, while they approve of the atrocities, they don’t want the world to know that they do, so it’s best to pretend you “don’t believe” those claims of atrocities.

But the world’s media was focused for weeks on the events of October 7, that is, on the attacks on Israeli men, women, and children. The mainstream media, on television, radio, and newspapers, carried the stories about the atrocities in detail. So did the Arabic-language channels on the BBC, VOA, AFP, DW that were listened to into Egypt. Millions of posts on social media, including those by Hamas members themselves, described the killings of civilians. Pro-Palestinian professors, such as Hamid Dabashi and Rashid Khalidi, exulted in the Hamas killings of civilians.

Here, as one example, is what Khalidi, a professor at Columbia, had to say: “Gaza has been under siege for 16 years. Israel had assumed that it could live a peaceful, quiet life whilst putting its boot heel on the Palestinians in the West Bank and in the Gaza Strip. And sooner or later, that had to explode. Now, it exploded in a particularly ugly fashion, with these massacres; it resulted in the highest death toll among Israeli civilians in the entire history of Israel’s wars, since 1948.”

It was clear to everyone in Egypt, as elsewhere: on October 7, Hamas committed “massacres” of “Israeli civilians.”

It would simply not have been possible for 94% of Egyptians to disbelieve what was being broadcast repeatedly, all over the world. They did know, and they approved. That’s why three quarters of them now hold Hamas in such high esteem, after years of despising the group because of its affiliation with the Muslim Brotherhood.

The moral of this unedifying tale is this: Rape, torture, and murder Israeli civilians to your heart’s content. The Egyptians, and the other Arabs, will love you for it.

Egypt Shuts Down its Border to Palestinian Refugees from Gaza

While Hamas calls on Gazans to be ‘human shields’.

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SEE: https://www.frontpagemag.com/egypt-shuts-down-its-border-to-palestinian-refugees-from-gaza/;

Republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, & research purposes.


U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken traveled to Israel and has pledged U.S. support as the Israeli military bombards Hamas-ruled Gaza with airstrikes, and is preparing for a possible ground invasion. Hamas jihadis have fired thousands of rockets into Israel, and continue to do so. Egypt has now committed to providing humanitarian aid, but it has shut down its border to Palestinian refugees from Gaza. Israel also currently refuses to allow goods to enter Gaza “until around 150 hostages taken captive by Hamas during a weekend attack are freed.” 2.3 million people are now blockaded between Israel and Egypt. The bottom line is that while Egypt is willing to serve as a mediator and even to advance the view that Israel returns to pre-1967 borders, its president, Abdel Fatah El-Sisi, is committed to his own country’s security interests. Egypt fears what Gazans may bring into Egypt if it opens its borders.

As a result of the high level of terrorist activity and threat among Palestinians over the decades, Egypt is shutting down the only other escape route from Gaza besides Israel—the Rafah crossing. According to Reuters:

Egypt has long restricted the flow of Gazans onto its territory, even during the fiercest conflicts. Cairo, a frequent mediator between Israel and the Palestinians, always insists the two sides resolve conflicts within their borders, saying this is the only way Palestinians can secure their right to statehood.

Gaza is saturated with jihadists, and Palestinians are now facing the ruins of a war that was started by Hamas — the jihadist group that Palestinians themselves chose to rule Gaza — an area also dominated by Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Both groups have worked hard to stir Palestinian zeal, even on a global level. Hamas is also supported by the global Muslim Brotherhood and Hizballah, which has been warned by America and Western allies to stay out of the war. Fatah, meanwhile, has praised Hamas and vowed to expand the war to Judea and Samaria. Iran is the chief funder and eternal instigator of all this. To further complicate matters, ISIS flags were discovered on the bodies of Hamas jihad terrorists in Kibbutz Sufa after its attack on that community.

Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi has stated that “guarding Egypt’s national security is his top responsibility, and there will be no compromise or complacency under any circumstances.”

Most Palestinians collectively ascribe to the jihadist obliteration of Israel: two-thirds of Palestinians actually believe that Israel will not exist in 25 years. Aside from children, they are not victims of their leadership; nor are they innocent bystanders. Palestinians, Hamas, and other jihad terror groups work in synergy. One can observe the strength of the Palestinian “resistance,” which has even won acceptance at the highest levels of American politics. The mainstreaming of the Palestinian cause is apparent in protests across North America, as multitudes of demonstrators cheer on the savagery of Hamas. Palestinians are heavily indoctrinated from early childhood to hate Jews and are even motivated toward martyrdom. They are indoctrinated at jihad summer camps and are continuously exposed to antisemitic school curricula.

HAMAS is the Arabic acronym for the Islamic Resistance Movement. Hamas leaders “see themselves as a ‘resistance’ organization, and they worry that if they lay down their arms, they will be outflanked by more radical factions within the Palestinian community and, like Fatah before them, lose their credibility among ordinary Palestinians.”

The Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research found “a dramatic surge in Palestinian support for Hamas” following the Gaza War of 2021, when Hamas attacked Israel with rocket fire, and Israel responded with Operation Guardian of the Walls. According to the Associated Press, the Palestinians viewed Hamas as “victors in a battle against Israel to defend Jerusalem and its holy sites.”

The Palestinians gave Hamas reason to intensify its “resistance,” and Hamas rose to the challenge, committing unimaginable atrocities against women, elderly people and even infants, who were beheaded along with IDF soldiers. Now Hamas is calling on Gazans to be human shields:

Hamas’ Interior Ministry: “We again call on [Gazan] citizens not to cooperate with the recorded phone messages that the occupation (i.e., Israel) is sending at random, asking people to leave their homes”

Again Hamas proves that its “resistance” is worth more than Palestinian lives, and the group may get its wish one way or another.

What brought El-Sisi to this point began with the turbulence that resulted in the 2013 military coup against Muslim Brotherhood leader Mohamed Morsi, along with his party. The Muslim Brotherhood, which is outlawed in Egypt, was an ideological ally of Hamas (an offshoot of the Brotherhood). Tensions flared when el-Sisi took a tough stance against Hamas “and ordered the destruction of a network of smuggling tunnels that had sustained Gaza’s economy.” Egypt also “retrospectively accused” Hamas of involvement in its 2011 revolution.

Although Egypt largely relaxed its border controls in 2018 and has improved its relations with Hamas over time, terrorism concerns persist. This is clear from Egypt’s latest decision to lock out Gazans. A further reason for Egypt’s reluctance to open its border to Gaza is that Sinai has seen ongoing jihad fighting for over a decade. Egypt’s military has in recent years largely succeeded in asserting its control over northern Sinai, but the area still faces sporadic attacks.

Palestinians are now stuck in Gaza. As Egypt moves to protect its own interests, it will continue to exert strenuous efforts for an Israeli ceasefire. As the war continues, Egypt must balance its own interests with key players on both sides of the fence. On one side is the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), which has fully embraced its “brothers” of “Palestine”; and on the other, is Israel and its Western allies; El-Sisi has in the past bent over backwards to prove himself “moderate.” Egypt’s desire to see a ceasefire will become more urgent in times ahead, as it has shut down the one route that could give Palestinians a respite, in a war where Israel’s new unity government has formed a war cabinet and vows to “crush Hamas.”

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Christine Williams

Christine Douglass-Williams is Associate Editor of Frontpage, a regular writer for Jihad Watch, a nine-time award-winning journalist, past Canadian government appointee to the Canadian Race Relations Foundation and the Office of Religious Freedom; author of "The Challenge of Modernizing Islam" and "Fired by the Canadian Government for Criticizing Islam".