As Israeli warplanes pound Gaza, killing more than 1,400 people and crushing buildings in response to last weekend’s unprecedented attack by Hamas, Israel’s leadership has repeatedly urged civilians to flee the territory while they can.
“Get out now,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Saturday, vowing to unleash the full force of Israel’s military.
But the only viable exit is a border crossing into Egypt, and that country, as ever in times of war, is keeping it firmly shut.
The Egyptians are adamantly opposed to allowing Gazans to cross the border for fear the country could become sucked deeper into the crisis — even as Israel presses ahead with a punishing siege that is rapidly escalating into a dire humanitarian crisis.
Gazans must “stay steadfast and remain on their land,” President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi said on Thursday in response to growing calls, including from American officials, for Cairo to allow safe passage to civilians fleeing Gaza.
Egyptians have long feared that Israel could use the crisis to make the Gaza conflict Egypt’s problem, too. “Egypt will not allow the Palestinian cause to be settled at the expense of other parties,” Mr. el-Sisi said earlier, on Tuesday. But pressure is growing to provide an escape valve for at least some of Gaza’s 2.3 million people, who, fearing for their lives, have nowhere to go.
The Egyptians say they will facilitate a humanitarian corridor to get urgently needed aid into Gaza, where Israel has cut off supplies of food, fuel and water as part of what its defense minister calls a “complete siege” — a tactic that aid and human rights groups have denounced as collective punishment and a likely war crime.
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