Why wont egypt let them in

· ynonp's blog

Below is my response and commentary on the article: https://www.sydney.edu.au/news-opinion/news/2024/02/27/why-egypt-refuses-to-open-its-border-to-palestinians.html

But first some points about Rhetorics. I used ChatGPT's help to analyze it because I couldn't put my finger on it. Here's what I see now

Critical Reading and Rhetorical Techniques Used #

1. The most important technique: controlling the causal story #

The article begins with:

"Around 1.5 million Palestinian civilians are currently squeezed into… Rafah after repeatedly being forced by Israeli bombardment and ground assaults to evacuate further and further south."

Notice the causal chain:

Palestinian civilians → Israeli bombardment → displacement → Rafah → Egypt refuses them entry.

What is missing from that chain is the event that produced the war: Hamas's October 7 attack, the killing of Israeli civilians, hostage-taking, Hamas's continuing military presence in Gaza, and Israel's stated objective of dismantling Hamas and recovering hostages.

By February 27, 2024, none of that was obscure background. Reuters' chronology published that same day began the war with the Hamas attack that killed about 1,200 people and resulted in 253 hostages being taken. Subsequent UN investigations found serious violations by Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups; Human Rights Watch later concluded that killing civilians and hostage-taking were central elements of the October 7 attack.

That does not automatically justify Israel's subsequent conduct. But removing October 7 changes the reader's understanding of what sort of event is being described.

Instead of:

Hamas attacks Israel → Israel launches a war against Hamas → enormous civilian destruction/displacement → Egypt confronts refugee crisis

the article effectively gives you:

Israel attacks Palestinians → Palestinians flee → Israel may expel them → Egypt refuses complicity.

That is one of its most consequential rhetorical decisions.

2. The remarkable absence of October 7 #

For an article published in February 2024 about decisions being taken during the Israel--Hamas war, the absence of the October 7 attack is rhetorically significant.

It isn't merely an omitted trivia point.

October 7 provides the immediate causal context for:

None of this automatically justifies every Israeli military action.

But leaving it out changes the reader's understanding of what kind of event this is.

Without October 7, the Gaza campaign can easily be understood as essentially:

Israel decided to unleash destructive violence upon Palestinians.

With October 7 included, even a severe critic of Israel has to deal with a more difficult proposition:

Israel was responding to an extraordinary mass-casualty attack and hostage-taking, but the legality and proportionality of its response remain disputed.

That second formulation places moral questions on both the initiation and conduct of war.

The article overwhelmingly foregrounds only the latter.

3. Hamas is present only when Egypt needs a justification #

Your observation about Hamas is especially important.

Search mentally through the piece. Hamas appears principally in the section:

"Egypt's complicated relationship with Hamas"

But what function does Hamas serve there?

It explains Egyptian fears:

What Hamas barely does in the story is fight Israel.

There is almost no discussion of:

So Hamas undergoes an unusual transformation.

It is simultaneously important enough to explain Egypt's security policy but nearly irrelevant to explaining Israel's military policy.

That asymmetry is rhetorically powerful.

It means Egypt is granted a security rationale:

refugees could produce insurgency, destabilisation or conflict.

Israel is largely denied an analogous security rationale.

A critical reader should immediately ask:

Why is Egyptian fear of Hamas treated as explanatory context while Israeli fear of Hamas is largely omitted?

You don't have to conclude that Israel's actions were justified. The point is that the article applies different explanatory standards to different actors.

4. Agency is distributed very unevenly #

Look at the verbs.

Israel:

Palestinians:

Egypt:

This creates an agency hierarchy:

Israel acts. Palestinians suffer. Egypt reacts.

Hamas is the awkward exception because it is a Palestinian actor with substantial agency. Minimising Hamas therefore helps preserve the article's moral grammar.

If Hamas were extensively present, the reader would have to process Palestinians simultaneously as:

  1. civilians undergoing catastrophe, and
  2. members/supporters/rulers/fighters belonging to an armed political organisation engaged in war.

Those categories can coexist. But rhetorically it is much simpler to keep the second category outside the frame.

5. The article establishes the moral verdict extremely early #

Before explaining Egyptian policy, the article gives you:

Only after this emotional-moral architecture has been established do we reach:

"However, Egypt… has rebuffed pressure to accept Palestinian refugees."

So before you evaluate Egypt's decision, you have been given an emotionally saturated scenario.

This is priming.

It doesn't require false information.

Priming works through order:

suffering → perpetrator → vulnerable population → closed border

Now Egypt's closed border becomes morally interesting chiefly because Israel created the emergency.

That makes the later argument--that accepting refugees might facilitate ethnic cleansing--feel like the natural explanation.

6. The ICJ sentence is an excellent example of fact + interpretation #

The article says:

"In a military onslaught the International Court of Justice has ruled a plausible case of genocide…"

That wording is rhetorically much stronger than what the January 26 ruling actually established.

At the provisional-measures stage, the ICJ did not rule that Israel was committing genocide, nor did it adjudicate the merits of South Africa's genocide allegation. It found, among other things, that at least some of the rights claimed by South Africa under the Genocide Convention were plausible and that there was urgency sufficient to indicate provisional measures. The case therefore proceeded.

That distinction sounds technical, but rhetorically it matters enormously.

Compare:

"The ICJ has ruled a plausible case of genocide."

with:

"In proceedings that had not yet determined whether genocide had occurred, the ICJ found that Palestinians had plausible rights under the Genocide Convention requiring provisional protection."

The first formulation leaves many readers with:

International court → genocide plausibly happening.

The second leaves them with:

serious legal allegation → preliminary judicial threshold met → final question unresolved.

Same underlying proceeding. Very different cognitive impression.

This is a classic technique: compress a legally qualified fact until the qualification largely disappears.

7. "Ethnic cleansing" is introduced before it is demonstrated #

The argument goes:

"Egypt does not want to be seen to be facilitating ethnic cleansing…"

The phrase is enormously morally loaded.

Then the article supplies evidence:

These are genuinely relevant facts. They provide good grounds for concern that significant Israeli political actors supported permanent Palestinian displacement.

But notice the inferential movement:

some officials advocate transfer → therefore mass flight to Egypt may amount to Israeli ethnic cleansing → therefore Egypt accepting refugees could facilitate it.

The article rarely stops to distinguish:

Instead, they are assembled into a cumulative pattern.

That technique is often called association by accumulation.

No single piece must prove the thesis. The quantity of disturbing quotations makes the conclusion psychologically convincing.

8. Netanyahu's denial is included--but neutralised #

This is quite sophisticated.

The article does include:

Netanyahu said Israel has "no intention of permanently occupying Gaza".

So technically the opposing position is present.

But immediately:

"he hasn't shut down talk from his ministers about it."

and:

everyone was "entitled to their opinions".

Thus the denial functions less as counterevidence than as evidence of tolerance for the alleged agenda.

This is sometimes called inoculation.

You include the obvious objection so the reader cannot say it was omitted--but structure it so it strengthens rather than weakens your argument.

The resulting logic is approximately:

Netanyahu denies displacement, but people in his government advocate it, and he does not silence them.

Therefore the denial becomes suspicious.

9. The Nakba analogy does enormous rhetorical work #

The article repeatedly connects the present to 1948:

"another Nakba"

and explains the historic Palestinian refugee population.

This supplies a ready-made interpretive template:

1948 displacement → refugees prevented from returning → 2024 Gazans crossing into Egypt → perhaps permanent exile again.

This is powerful because once the reader accepts the analogy, Egypt's conduct looks much less like refusing refugees and much more like preventing a historical crime from being completed.

The analogy may be relevant. But critical reading requires asking:

What differences between the two cases disappear when the analogy is invoked?

For example:

The article does not seriously explore those distinctions.

That is how historical analogy becomes persuasive: similarities are foregrounded; disanalogies are backgrounded.

10. Egypt receives much more psychological complexity than Israel #

Egypt's motives include:

That's a sophisticated multi-causal explanation.

Israel's motives receive far less analysis.

Instead we get Israeli officials' statements about:

What we largely don't get is a comparable account of Israel thinking:

Again, the reader can ultimately reject those arguments.

But their omission matters.

Egypt is treated as an actor with fears and dilemmas.

Israel is predominantly treated as an actor with intentions and power.

Psychological complexity humanises an actor. Removing it tends to moralise the actor.

11. Does the article actually justify Egypt's refusal? #

In an interesting way, yes.

That is one of the piece's tensions.

At first glance it is sympathetic to Palestinians trapped at the Egyptian border. Yet much of the essay supplies strong reasons why Egypt should not open it to mass migration:

So although the article criticises Egypt for aid problems and alleged corruption, its central argument effectively validates Egypt's refusal of large-scale refugee settlement.

This creates a grim structure:

Israel must not displace Palestinians. Egypt must not accept their displacement. Palestinians must remain in Gaza.

That is why you may feel the article leaves no obvious humanitarian alternative.

12. The article repeatedly moves from possibility to atmosphere #

Look at the cumulative sequence:

Israeli ministers advocate emigration → historical Nakba → refugees never returned → Dichter says "Gaza Nakba" → Egypt fears another Nakba → Israeli assault may push Palestinians through the border → Egypt constructs a buffer area.

Each step can be individually sourced.

Collectively, though, they produce a larger proposition:

A second mass expulsion may be the actual trajectory of Israeli policy.

The article doesn't have to explicitly state:

"Israel's real plan is ethnic cleansing."

It allows the reader to construct that conclusion.

This is one of the most important answers to your question, "How do they deliver the message without writing it?"

Through implicature.

A writer places A, B, C and D beside each other, knowing that readers will infer E.

13. Loaded language: facts combined with evaluative vocabulary #

One of the most effective techniques in the piece is that factual propositions and moral judgments frequently occur in the same sentence.

For example:

"In a military onslaught the International Court of Justice has ruled a plausible case of genocide…"

There are several different things occurring here.

"Military operation" would be relatively descriptive.

"Military onslaught" is evaluative. It suggests overwhelming, indiscriminate, or brutal violence.

Then "genocide" appears immediately afterwards.

So the psychological association becomes:

Israeli military action → onslaught → genocide

even though the legal claim being referenced is considerably more technical than "the ICJ ruled that Israel is committing genocide."

The phrase "plausible case of genocide" compresses a complicated legal proceeding into emotionally powerful shorthand.

The rhetorical technique is semantic clustering: placing strongly negative concepts beside one another so they reinforce each other.

Other examples include:

"forcibly transfer"

"ethnic cleansing"

"expulsion"

"another Nakba"

"open-air prison"

"dire human rights implications"

"cynicism, despair and, ultimately, abandonment"

Some of those phrases describe real allegations or historical arguments. But taken together they create an overwhelmingly unified moral vocabulary.

Notice what kinds of words dominate:

forced, expelled, ethnic cleansing, catastrophe, genocide, prison, bombardment, famine, abandonment.

The reader is not merely being informed about policy. The reader is being given a vocabulary through which to morally classify it.

14. "Facts without the full comparison set" #

This is another major technique.

Persuasive writing frequently does not require false facts. It can work through selection.

Consider the treatment of Israeli politicians.

The article extensively discusses:

What is largely absent is a systematic explanation of:

Netanyahu's denial is included:

"Israel has 'no intention of permanently occupying Gaza'"

But notice what immediately follows:

"he hasn't shut down talk from his ministers about it."

So the counterargument appears, but the article neutralizes it immediately.

This is an important rhetorical technique called concession and rebuttal.

You briefly acknowledge evidence against your framing, which makes the piece appear balanced, then reinterpret it so that it supports the original framing anyway.

The structure becomes:

Israel says X.
However…

Whenever you see "however", "but", "having said that", "while", etc., look carefully at what comes before and after.

Usually the author gives greater rhetorical weight to whatever follows the conjunction.

Now to the post, paragraph by paragraph: #

Around 1.5 million Palestinian civilians are currently squeezed into the southern Gaza city of Rafah after repeatedly being forced by Israeli bombardment and ground assaults to evacuate further and further south.

Civilians escaping battle zones is actually a good thing

Context: The Gaza strip is small and dense. Military assets are located inside civilian population and inside an underground city that was built for the past 10 years preparing for this war. The underground city includes 500KM of tunnels going under almost every building. In addition to the tunnels the buildings and tunnel entries are boobytrapped and set to explode when soldiers enter. When the military campaign began it was clear you can't have civilians in the battlefield and extreme measures were taken to evacuate them. Israel has decided to begin the campaign from the north because Gazans were firing rockets on Israeli cities every day from these areas.

The town, which originally had a population of 250,000, is now host to more than half of Gaza's entire population. They are sheltering in conditions the UN's top aid official has called "abysmal", with disease spreading and famine looming.

Yes. Egypt should let them in

In a military onslaught the International Court of Justice has ruled a plausible case of genocide, Israel has so far killed over 29,000 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. Now there are increasing fears Israel's expected ground assault on Rafah could push civilians across the border into Egypt's Sinai Peninsula.

Ask Yourself Are these 29,000 militants or civilians? Were they killed in Raffah or in the north? where did you get the numbers from?

Here's BBC admitting they mix the 2 https://www.thejc.com/news/uk/bbc-admits-hamas-civilian-death-reporting-was-inaccurate-v5ol1jek

Originally designated as a "safe zone", Rafah is now being targeted by Israeli airstrikes, as well. Those fleeing the violence have nowhere safe to go.

Link is dead, but yes ammunition stores and missile launchers are bombed. However the total death toll from these humanitarian areas is very low. Because Al-Mawasi casualties from specific events total a few hundred relative to tens of thousands overall, the proportion remains well below 1% of the total recorded mortality. That is 1% in an area that hosts most of the population.

However, Egypt, the only country aside from Israel that has a border with Gaza, has rebuffed pressure to accept Palestinian refugees displaced by Israel. Reports have indicated that Israeli officials have tried to lobby international support to compel Egypt to accept refugees from Gaza.

Yes we think it's the best solution to keep them alive.

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi, however, has been adamant in refusing to allow humanitarian corridors or the entry of large numbers of Palestinians into Sinai. He has called it a "red line" that, if crossed, would "liquidate the Palestinian cause".

Ask Yourself What is the "Palestinian cause" ? How is it more important than their lives?

In recent days, the UN's High Commissioner for Refugees, Filippo Grandi, has validated Egypt's position. Grandi said displacing Gazans to Egypt would be "catastrophic" for both Egypt and the Palestinians, who, he indicated, would likely not be allowed to return.

Now we get to the gist of it. And they continue.

There are a few reasons for Egypt's opposition. The first is that Egypt does not want to be seen to be facilitating ethnic cleansing through the permanent resettlement of Palestinians outside of Gaza.

Is ethnic cleansing a genocide? Of course not they are opposites.

An ethnic cleansing is where the population leaves, a genocide is when you prevent them to leave in order to kill them. Nazis wouldn't let jews leave - that's extermination. When Iraq expelled all its jews it was ethnic cleansing. Both are terrible but you can't do both at the same time.

And now back to our story: What is the basis for this claim? The article was written in Feb 24. Since then we have seen clear evidence that war refugees from this war did return to their homes. Gazans from the north returned to Northern Gaza. Lebanese returned to southern Lebanon. Even if one could argue in Feb 24 they weren't sure, today it's clear that no mass deportation was ever considered.

In October, a leaked document from Israel's Intelligence Ministry included recommendations to forcibly transfer of Gaza's population of 2.3 million out of the territory and into tent cities in Egypt's Sinai Desert.

Yes we think it's a good idea for Gazans to leave and find better lives. Sinai is a terrible option but the world is big and there's no reason people would be forced to live in dire conditions when they have other options. That eventually didn't happen.

Government ministers Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir have also both openly advocated the expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza to make way for their replacement by Israeli settlers.

As previously stated, yes we think if Gazans were to leave that would allow a better future for the region.

Further, in January, a conference in Israel calling for this very plan was attended by 11 members of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's cabinet and 15 additional members of parliament.

Yes we think it's a good idea. Not to Sinai but certainly to build a future in different Muslim countries. The current alternative of constant war is way worse. Netanyahu by the way doesn't think it and has repeatedly said that Gazans should remain in Gaza.

While Netanyahu last month said Israel has "no intention of permanently occupying Gaza", he hasn't shut down talk from his ministers about it. When asked about the conference in January, for example, he said everyone was "entitled to their opinions".

Here they acknowledge it too. Everyone was entitled to their opinions is not something a Nazi leader would say though.

Sisi is also conscious of the strong surge of sympathy the Egyptian public has demonstrated for the Palestinians and the support they have shown for his opposition to any displacement of people across the border. This is due to feelings of solidarity with the Palestinian struggle, as well as an awareness of the lessons of history.

Back to the "Palestinian struggle". Ask yourself, what is this struggle? What's the goal of the Palestinian struggle? Just because someone is struggling that doesn't mean their goal is justified.

Recalling 1947-49, when an estimated 750,000 were either expelled or forced to flee their homes by Zionist forces during the war surrounding the creation of the state of Israel, Egypt doesn't want to be seen to be enabling another Nakba, or "catastrophe".

Context Israel was established in 1948. It was under an arms embargo from the US, had 600,000 citizens and was attacked that same day by all the surrounding Arab countries: Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Iraq (yes Iraq is far away, they went all the way). Somehow the jews won and during the fights many Arabs escaped. The ones who remained became Israeli citizens. The ones who escaped were left out. That's an open wound which nobody knows how to fix. For the Arab nations the wound was not Palestinian suffering but the establishment of a Jewish state. For decades they have been using the crisis to claim Israel should cease to exist.

The total number of refugees created by the Nakba now stands at around 6 million. According to the UN, about a third live in refugee camps, Israel having denied their right to return to their homeland.

Context Normally a refugee is a person escaped their land due to war. Palestinian refugee status is currently the only refugee status in the world that is inherited, that is the children and grandchildren and all future generations of the Arabs who escaped, who were born in different countries are still considered refugees. Ask yourself - how is a person born in Jordan to Jordanian parents can be considered a UN refugee? And for how long?

Significantly, in November, Israel's minister for agriculture, Avi Dichter, declared: "We are now rolling out the Gaza Nakba," adding, "Gaza Nakba 2023. That's how it'll end." Some people speak without thinking. Remember this is the minister for agriculture trying to win political gain. No Netanyahu here.

Egypt is its security. If Palestinians were resettled in Sinai, it could make the Egyptian territory a new base from which to launch resistance operations. This could drag Egypt into a military conflict with Israel.

Nobody suggested them to settle in Sinai desert it's a terrible option. They were asked to setup temporary refuge for people to leave a war zone and return when the war ended. Check the people on entry and don't let them carry weapons.

Ask Yourself If these people are so dangerous how come everyone depicts them as helpless civilians being exterminated?

In addition, Sisi has only just managed to clamp down on Islamist insurgents in North Sinai in recent years and is presumably concerned that an influx of refugees could be destabilising.

Ask Yourself Again If these people are so dangerous how come everyone depicts them as helpless civilians being exterminated?

Finally, Sisi likely believes Hamas could mount opposition to his regime. After overthrowing President Mohamed Morsi in a military coup in 2013, the Sisi regime cracked down on the Muslim Brotherhood and repressed all dissent. This extended to a demonisation of Hamas, which grew out of the Muslim Brotherhood's Palestinian branch. Between 2014 and 2016, the Egyptian military bombed and flooded tunnels linking Gaza with Egypt, at the same time as accusing Hamas of colluding with the Muslim Brotherhood against the state. It has also enforced Israel's blockade of the Gaza Strip.

Context For the past 10 years Hamas has been buying weapons from Egypt smuggled in huge tunnels beneath the border. That is the weapon used in the Oct 7 attack. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaza_Strip_smuggling_tunnels https://www.fdd.org/analysis/2024/05/17/israel-50-rafah-tunnels-to-egypt-unearthed/ https://fount.aucegypt.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2831&context=etds

Bottom line

The way I read into this is simple. Public opinion in Egypt is pro "Palestinian Cause" which is widely understood as the destruction of Israel. Egyptian government enjoys the show, on one hand watching Gazans suffer while everyone ignores their responsibility and just blames Israel. Ask yourself - where did Gazans get all their weapons? and if you (Egypt) sell weapons to Gazans, are you not partly responsible for this war too?

And if you still have time and power, another insightful analysis in English: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8CvsopYTUY

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