Episode Notes:

Joining us today to discuss the Egyptian perspective on the War in Gaza is Michael Wahid Hanna. Michael is U.S. Program Director at the International Crisis Group and a Non-Resident Senior Fellow at the Reiss Center on Law and Security at NYU School of Law.

[:38] Egyptian concerns

[2:52] Population transfer

[6:00] Cairo's alternative

[8:57] Post-Hamas Gaza

Episode Transcript

Nicholas Danforth: My name is Nicholas Danforth and I'm an editor at War on the Rocks. You are listening to The WarCast, the members-only podcast for what you need to know now. Joining us today to discuss the Egyptian perspective on the war on Gaza is Michael Wahid Hanna. Michael is the U.S. program director at the International Crisis Group and a non-resident senior fellow at the Reiss Center on Law and Security at NYU School of Law. Welcome to The WarCast.

Michael Wahid Hanna: Good to be with you.

Nicholas Danforth: So to start out, what is going through President Sisi's head right now as he watches all this unfold?

Michael Wahid Hanna: Yeah, interestingly, obviously this is an autocratic state, and this is one man making key decisions. But in this instance, it is a decision that is reflective of years of background thinking and deep-seated fears on the part of Egypt about the potential fate of Palestinians in Gaza. This is not a new topic, and for a region that has seen waves of Palestinian refugees in '48 and in '67, there has been this lurking concern in Egyptian security circles that at some point there might be an effort to push off this problem in terms of unresolved Palestinian national aspirations. And the questions about the future of Palestinians from Israel on to Egypt. Right-wing Israelis have referred to this as the three-state solution whereby Palestinians are pushed out of Gaza and out of the West Bank into Egypt and Jordan respectively, thereby solving the problem.

For many years, this sounded vaguely conspiratorial. I used to hear this during the Morsi era in Egypt after the Egyptian uprising in 2011, that there was perhaps collusion between Hamas and the Brotherhood, and that there were plans afoot to bring Gazans into Sinai. And of course now we have right-wing Israelis saying this out loud, that in fact there is an idea that this would be an ideal solution. Not that this is government policy, but the fact that Egypt hears this in the press, hears people who used to serve in high positions in government and those associated with the government talking about transfer, the idea that you would push Palestinians out of Gaza into Egypt is a red line. And so this has caused great consternation and alarm in Cairo.

Nicholas Danforth: And before we get to Cairo's response to that, give us a better sense because I have seen a fair amount of reporting. How seriously is this idea of transfer being taken in Jerusalem, in Washington, anywhere else? You make it sound like people in Cairo are certainly alarmed about it.

Michael Wahid Hanna: I don't think we fully know. There are reports that Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu has broached the idea of with others diplomats in Europe about trying to persuade Egypt to open its borders so that Palestinians can leave Gaza and flow into Sinai. And of course, a lot of this started when Israel, at the beginning of the aerial campaign, effectively asked all of Northern Gaza, 1.2 million people to move from north and central Gaza into the South.

And so that began this process of alarm. And we have seen these recurrent reports that there are background efforts to perhaps push Palestinians from Gaza into Egypt, unclear there about the ultimate intent. Some say this is a wartime measure to protect civilians and to get them out of harm's way. For many Palestinians with their history and others in the region when they hear this, they assume that when Palestinians leave their homes, the potential result is that they'll never be able to come back. But just how seriously this is being taken is an open question. I know the United States has helpfully made public pronouncements against the idea of population transfer, but it clearly hasn't calmed nerves.

Nicholas Danforth: In one scenario people have raised is if the fighting in the Gaza Strip moves south and you have Palestinians as refugees coming up to the border seeking to flee into Egypt, what would the Egyptian government's response be in that specific scenario?

Michael Wahid Hanna: For now, we know that Palestinians in Gaza have effectively said, "We're not leaving our homes." But of course the fighting is intense. It has already spread to the South. One of the issues for Gazans is that there's nowhere safe to go. There's nowhere to hide because the entirety of the Gaza Strip is being targeted, including the border crossing with Egypt. It's one of the reasons humanitarian assistance was very slow to start and still frankly, a trickle because the violence is everywhere. We saw yesterday for the first time that some injured left Gaza for Egyptian hospitals and that some dual nationals and foreigners were able to evacuate Gaza. And of course, I think Egypt is well-prepared for this, is okay with this, has no problem. Its hospital in Arish and Sinai has been prepped to receive injured from Gaza.

Nicholas Danforth: And then more long-term, what are Cairo's plans to try to manage the crisis to prevent the scenarios that you were discussing?

Michael Wahid Hanna: Clearly there's a great desire to open sustainable lines of humanitarian access if you are hoping to forestall a rush into Sinai and the situation on the other side of the border is catastrophic, one approach and a humane one at that is to increase humanitarian assistance. It can't solve the underlying problem. This isn't a natural disaster. It's caused by a war. And until there's a real pause or something more sustainable, there is going to be an acute humanitarian need in Gaza. And so efforts to date have been really anemic, a drop in the bucket in terms of what Gazans need in terms of food, water, electricity, fuel. And so I think there's a lot of focus on how to do that. That isn't a decision that Egypt can make on its own. It's something that'll have to be negotiated. There's no authority on the other side, so to speak at the moment. And so inspection mechanisms are something that will have to be worked out.

And of course, Israel has said that they won't allow fuel in, and that's frankly just not a sustainable position unless you are okay seeing Palestinian society in Gaza collapse and people die from all sorts of collateral effects. And so that's the first order for Cairo. More broadly, the region is quite nervous about the regionalization of conflict. And so there is an effort to present a much more united front on this than is usual for the Arab world. But I think it's reflective of how serious the concern is about what a regionalized conflict. And here, I mean, the spread of conflict in terms of the West Bank and East Jerusalem, but primarily in terms of Hizballah on Israel's northern border and potentially further afield, that would really set the region on a path to destabilization. So I think initial focus now on humanitarian access, but more behind the scenes in terms of trying to put pressure on Israel and the United States and others to try to bring the war to a near-term close.

Nicholas Danforth: And then one final question. There's been some speculation at least that if Israel succeeded in destroying Hamas, Egyptian forces might participate in some governing authority in the Gaza Strip after the conflict. Is that something that Cairo is open to? Is that serious?

Michael Wahid Hanna: It doesn't seem serious. I mean, one of the reasons that beyond the conflict resolution dimensions of Palestinians moving into Sinai, one of the reasons that Egypt is so loathed to accept this burden is the idea of policing Palestinians, right? If you displace Palestinians without resolving the conflict, it's reasonable to assume that armed resistance and efforts at that kind of resistance would continue putting Egypt in the position of policing Palestinians. And so I have no doubt they don't want to do that on their own territory in northern Sinai. And I have no doubt that they don't want to do that in Gaza without a political horizon, without a way in which to deal with the underlying grievances, you would be effectively asking Egypt to forcibly police Palestinians. And that seems highly, highly unlikely as something that would be palatable to Cairo.

Nicholas Danforth: Thank you very much for joining us on The WarCast.

Michael Wahid Hanna: Yeah. Thanks very much for having me.