Egypt warily eyes crisis on its crowded border
CAIRO — The pressure on Egypt is building.
More than half of the Gaza Strip’s population is squeezed into tent cities in Rafah, a small city along Egypt’s border, left with nowhere else to go by Israel’s military campaign.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel has threatened to overrun the area, but it is not clear where the Palestinians would go.
Rather than opening its border to give Palestinians a refuge from the onslaught, Egypt has reinforced its frontier with Gaza. It has also warned Israel that any move that would send Palestinians from Gaza spilling into its territory could jeopardize the decades-old Israel-Egypt peace treaty, an anchor of Middle East stability since 1979.
During past conflicts in the region, Egypt has taken in refugees from Syria, Yemen and Sudan. But in this war, it has reacted differently to the plight of its Arab neighbors, spurred by a mix of alarm over its own security and fear that the displacement could become permanent.
Egyptian leaders are also wary of Hamas stoking militancy and spreading influence in their country.
Egyptian officials have urged their Western counterparts to tell Israel that they see any move to force Palestinians to cross from Gaza into Sinai as a violation that would effectively suspend the 1979 peace treaty, according to a senior Western diplomat in Cairo. Another senior Western official said the message was even more direct, with Egypt threatening to suspend the treaty if the Israeli military pushed Palestinians from Gaza into Egypt.
The official said Egypt had made clear that it was prepared to militarize its border, perhaps with tanks, if Palestinians begin to be pushed into Sinai.