| ▲ | wat10000 19 hours ago |
| They've also been cooperating on blockading Gaza for a couple of decades. Israel gets most of the attention for that, mostly rightfully so, but people seem to forget that there's a border with Egypt too and that has also had very limited access. |
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| ▲ | Yizahi 18 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| Egypt learned on other's mistakes for once. They saw how Jordan welcomed Palestinians on their land and they repaid the kindness by launching a coup against the government in 1970. No wonder not a single anti-Israeli coalition country is willing to deal with Palestinians directly at their own home and are keeping borders watertight :) . |
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| ▲ | shykes 9 hours ago | parent [-] | | Don't forget that after being expelled from Jordan, Arafat relocated to Lebanon where he proceeded to take over the South ("Fatahland"), start a civil war, and pull in Israel with constant attacks across the border. Until Israel kicked them out in 1982, the Palestinians played the disruptive, parasitic role in Lebanon that Hezbollah plays today. In fact, Hezbollah rose to power precisely by filling the void left by the Palestinians in 82. |
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| ▲ | ethbr1 17 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| As an Arab friend summed it up, 'All Arab governments like to trumpet the Palestinian cause when it serves them, but none of them are willing to lift a finger to help the Palestinians.' |
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| ▲ | anvuong 10 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Are you sure? Jordanians tried and it burned them spectacularly. And if my memory served, Egypt also tried to some extent and eventually was eagerly and happily offloading Gaza into Israel's hands. Then, they built a huge border defensive line to keep Gazan out that would make Trump's Mexican border a joke in comparison. At some points people need to wonder why. | | |
| ▲ | shykes 9 hours ago | parent [-] | | Egypt is trying to have their cake and eat it too. Total crackdown on islamists at home - whether Hamas or any other incarnation of the Muslim Brotherhood - but also making sure they remain a thorn in the side of Egypt's rivals. See for example the massive smuggling tunnels discovered by the IDF in Rafah in 2024, which had been keeping Hamas covertly resupplied through Egypt. Hard to imagine that Egypt was unaware. |
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| ▲ | 12 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | [deleted] |
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| ▲ | ceejayoz 19 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| To be fair, part of the peace deal between Egypt and Israel gave Israel some control over the crossing, and they seized it entirely during the war. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rafah_Border_Crossing > The Rafah crossing was opened by Israel after the 1979 peace treaty and remained under Israeli control until 2005... > Under a 2007 agreement between Egypt and Israel, Egypt controls the crossing but imports through the Rafah crossing require Israeli approval. |
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| ▲ | trollbridge 19 hours ago | parent [-] | | This is to a large part to give Egypt plausible deniability. They don’t want to deal with Gaza, refugees, or a humanitarian crisis, but also don’t want the political fallout of taking action like the Israelis do. | | |
| ▲ | ceejayoz 19 hours ago | parent [-] | | Eh, 50/50. Israel would not respond positively to Egypt throwing the gates wide open. | | |
| ▲ | shykes 9 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | On the contrary, I believe Israel would be delighted. It would lessen the humanitarian burden on them, and force Egypt to deal with the Hamas problem more directly. It will never happen, though. No Arab country will "throw the gates wide open" for Palestinians. They have done so before, several times, and it went very badly. | |
| ▲ | don_esteban 16 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | The Israeli openly proposed for the Gaza Palestinians to move to Egypt (effectively ethnic cleansing Gaza, their obvious goal), not that long after 7.10. Egypt said 'HELL NO', first, because they don't want to deal with Palestinians (both political and economic nightmare), and second because it would have been viewed as ceding to Israelis and helping them cleanse Gaza, which would be highly unpopular among their population. | | |
| ▲ | ceejayoz 16 hours ago | parent [-] | | > The Israeli openly proposed for the Gaza Palestinians to move to Egypt Yeah, that's not "wide open". Israel would absolutely be happy with a one-way exit gate. | | |
| ▲ | shykes 9 hours ago | parent [-] | | Most Palestinians would be happy too... In practice "wide open" and "one-way exit gate" are the same thing. |
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| ▲ | philistine 18 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | That is very reductive of the whole situation. The Egyptians are not singularly focused on helping Palestinians; it is far more nuanced than that. Bottom line, Egyptians are not interested in supporting millions of refugees inside their border. So the border stays closed to mass immigration. | | |
| ▲ | ceejayoz 18 hours ago | parent [-] | | All that may be true. Also true: If Egypt opened the border and Israel objected, Israel would take swift military action. | | |
| ▲ | deepsun 17 hours ago | parent [-] | | No, why? Israel would celebrate. But NONE of the Arab countries want to help Gaza people really. | | |
| ▲ | ceejayoz 16 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | > No, why? Israel would celebrate. This is directly contradicted by Israel's actions in the Gaza War. Egyptian control of the crossing was not enough, so they took it. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-05-07/israel-ra... | | |
| ▲ | JumpCrisscross 11 hours ago | parent [-] | | Israel would object to aid and weapons flows into Gaza. It would be fine with Gazans leaving the Strip. The problem is there are currently zero takers globally for a significant Palestinian refugee population, in part, as other comments have mentioned, due to the history of Palestinian refugee populations in the Middle East. (To my knowledge, Palestinian Americans have been fine and productive members of society.) | | |
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| ▲ | 8note 16 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | if egypt opened the border, it would mean weapons and bombs flowing from egypt into gaza. thats not something israel would be excited about | | |
| ▲ | fakedang 12 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | More like refugees flowing out, which Egypt doesn't want to deal with. The Palestinians didn't help their cause with Yasser Arafat's Black September uprising in Jordan. Then they topped that up with strong support for Saddam when he invaded Kuwait. Like the ones in Kuwait were literally betraying Kuwaitis to the Iraqi troops. Oh, and did I forget Lebanon? They literally fomented the civil war. | |
| ▲ | deepsun 13 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | I mean "open the border" to allow Gazans to leave to Egypt. But Egypt (and none other Arab countries) are accepting refugees from Gaza. |
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| ▲ | pixl97 18 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | At the same time, neither would Egypt. Refugee crisises are messy. | | |
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| ▲ | aprilthird2021 19 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| People don't forget it. But Egypt is a dictatorship aligned with US/Israel, so there's again not much we can do there. Ending foreign aid to Egypt is probably very aligned with ending foreign aid to Israel in terms of popularity among American voters |
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| ▲ | woodruffw 19 hours ago | parent [-] | | > Ending foreign aid to Egypt is probably very aligned with ending foreign aid to Israel in terms of popularity among American voters I strongly suspect the average American has absolutely zero sense of how much foreign aid we give Egypt. That's not to contradict your point directly, just that it isn't a very salient part of American politics (unlike Israeli foreign aid). | | |
| ▲ | BobaFloutist 18 hours ago | parent [-] | | > it isn't a very salient part of American politics (unlike Israeli foreign aid). I feel like Israeli aid, while vastly more salient than it used to be, is still mostly salient as a left-of-center wedge issue, otherwise being about as salient as your average major foreign policy issue - ranking just under the least salient domestic policy issue, which ranks just under the most minor personal quality of any candidate, which ranks under the current state of the economy, which ranks under the current perceived state of the economy. Wow, that's way too many times to use "salient" in one sentence. And for the record, I'm not arguing about how much people should care, just how much they do. | | |
| ▲ | woodruffw 14 hours ago | parent [-] | | It's also become a right-of-center (right of far-right?) wedge issue in the past 12 months. But I otherwise completely agree with you; I think there's a veritable chasm between how much the media talks about the US's foreign aid (both to Israel and in general) and how much it actually matters to the average voter. |
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