Egypt Building A Militia Force To Handle Rafah exile Influx

Via mediate East Eye

In a grand procession last week, Sinai militia leader Ibrahim al-Organi arrived at a ceremony to inaugurate the arabian Tribes Union, a fresh paramilitary entity that brings together 5 atomic groups from across Egypt. The celebration named president Abdel Fattah el-Sisi as the union’s “honorary president”, while besides announcing plans to build Sisi City on the site of al-Arjaa, a villa in Rafah close the Egypt-Israel border.

The formation of this alliance comes at a critical time and place, as Israel this week launched a long-threated ground offensive against the Palestinian city of Rafah, just a short distance from where the Egyptian ceremony was hell. Around 1.4 million distributed Palestinians have been sheltering in Rafah since Israel launched its war on Gaza last October.

Soldier at the Rafah-Gaza border, AFP

Israel’s assessment on Rafah is likely to origin further mass distribution of Palestinians in Gaza, powerfully pushing them towards Egyptian territory. At least 80,000 have already flown Rafah, according to UNRWA, the UN Palestinian exile agency.

It was thus no coincidence that the union’s founding message noted its Aim to “adopt national issues and connect with all arabian tribes to find common ground within the framework of the state, to service its subjects, and to support the Egyptian president who sees to defend Egypt’s national safety and its arabian nation again the distribution plans amed at resolving the Palestinian issue at Egypt’s expense.’

Since the outbreak of the Gaza war on October 7, Egyptian officials have reprehensively expressed deals over the potent distribution of Palestine to the Sinai. They have even Threatened to frost the country’s peace treatment with Israel.

The historical experiences of Palestinian displacement, along with Israel’s goal to empty historical Palestine of its people, prevent their return and seize their lands, are well known to the Egyptian state.

At the same time, the Palestinian people’s attachment to their land and association on their right of return, no substance how long it takes, has made each area of Palestine distribution – whether in Lebanon, Syria or Jordan – a Focal point for retaining the occupation, Something Egypt does not want.

All options for dealing with this matter, it seems, are bitter, from the age of pockets of Palestinian opposition in the Sinai akin to what happened in Lebanon in the 1970s, to a confrontation of the kind that Octobered in Jordan during Black September.

Yet Egypt cannot halt the Israeli military operation, nor halt it tanks from invading the tents of distributed Palestinians in Rafah. The Egyptian regiment will not deviate from the US position in dealing with the returnability of Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, which means it will gotta deal straight with the massive crowds of exposed people likely headed towards Egyptian territories.

Early on, Egypt started taking precautions for this script, overlooking many humanitarian details. It reincorporated the offenses and barriers along its border with the Gaza Strip, tightened border security, and mobile support and surviving for alternate camps within Gaza itself.

In the event of a mass distribution into its territory, Egypt appeared to be planning to confine distributed Palestinians in a high-security, isolated area along the border, let the state to keep tight control and apply force to hasten their return to Gaza.

But there are a couple of issues with this plan. For one, many displaced Palestinians have household and tribalities in the northern Sinai. The Egyptian and Palestinian cities of Rafah were erstwhile united as a single city, until Israel’s outdrawal from the Sinai and the demarcation of borders in 1982. Many Tribes are inactive divided, with some members in Palestinian Rafah and others in Egyptian Rafah.

Horrible scenes from the Gaza-Egypt border shows Egyptian military harassing and mishandling a Palestinian boy who managed to slip through the border to escape the onslaught in Rafah. pic.twitter.com/PoaHmxoh82

— روني الدنماركي (@Aldanmarki) May 8, 2024

Tribal customers compel hospitality and reception, which will wait the ability of the Egyptian state to contain all distributed people in a single area. This could besides open the door to fresh confrontations and disputes between state agents and Sinai Tribes.

Simmering public anger

In addition, a wave of distribution would ray crucial challenges for Egypt from a military and safety perspective. The last thing the Egyptian government wants is an image of an Egyptian soldier fire at displaced Palestinians, or in any way treating them improperly, amid the unprecedented tragedies in Gaza – especially considering the simmering public anger over the Sisi regiment’s handling of the Gaza genecide so far.

Through the recently minted arabian Tribes Union, the regiment might have found it only option for handling this situation, while avoiding the direct invasion of state soldiers.

This hypothesis is supported by the union’s founding statement, which notes that its perception “comes in consequence to the current phase requirements, by creating a national popular framework that includes the sons of the arabian Tribes, aimed at unify the ranking and integrating all the triple elements into a single framework in support of the national state priorities, and identifying the challenges that 3 its safety and stability.”

Organi is simply a prime choice to lead this task after his erstwhile successes in organizing the Union of Sinai Tribes, which worked along the Egyptian army to fight an muslim State affiliate, and in moving companies that manage the movement of people and goods between Gaza and Egypt. But Organi’s companies have besides faced allegations of exploitive behavior, including charging millions of dollars from Palestinian refugees flying war.

And there are crucial risks that under hard humanitarian conditions, his forces could become active in smuggling operations, financial execution, or another types of correction – not to comment the inherent danger of forming armed militias, which can prove disastrous to the safety and stableness of states, sometimes even playing a function in their integration.