Recent declarations by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for his country’s army to prepare a plan to forcibly evacuate the people of Gaza from the northern parts of their war-shattered territory and coral them into concentration camps in the south have greatly alarmed authorities in Egypt.

Stoking concerns are Egyptian fears that the Israeli premier plans for his army would be a step on the road to completely displacing the people of Gaza into Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula.

“These commands raise many question marks about the future of the Gaza Strip and consequently the future of the whole region,” political analyst Mohamed al-Dehi told The New Arab. “Israel only wants to put the people of Gaza in a position where they are forced to escape to other places, including to Egypt.”

Netanyahu issued his commands for the Israeli army during a stormy cabinet meeting attended by the Chief of Staff of the Israeli military, Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir, along with a host of cabinet ministers, last week.

Apart from ordering the army to prepare an evacuation plan for people from northern Gaza, Netanyahu wanted the army to concentrate these people in Mawasi, a supposedly safe humanitarian zone in south-western Gaza, which is stuck between the Mediterranean and the Egyptian border.

Israel ostensibly wants to forcibly empty the northern part of Gaza as part of plans to tighten the noose around Hamas’ fighters.

They also come as the Israeli army extends its control over almost 75% of the space of the 365-kilometre Palestinian territory.

Small detail

Netanyahu, now on a visit to Washington, DC to meet President Donald Trump, his third visit to the US in less than six months, wants the northern Gaza evacuation plan to be ready by his return on Thursday.

In Cairo, analysts say this evacuation plan is part of a larger Israeli ambition to impose its military control over the whole of the Gaza Strip, one which compounds other Israeli plans to annex parts of the occupied West Bank to Israel.

“Israel has been consistently trying to expel Palestinians from the occupied West Bank since October 7, 2023,” political researcher Ahmed Abdel Meguid told TNA.

“It continues to actively construct new settlements in lands usurped from the Palestinians with the aim of imposing new realities on the ground,” he added.

A few days before Netanyahu gave orders to his army to evacuate northern Gaza, members of his ruling Likud Party asked him to annexe parts of the occupied West Bank.

The plan for imposing military control over Gaza faces stiff opposition from the Israeli army, including from Zamir, who voiced concern during the aforementioned cabinet meeting that controlling the 2.2 million residents of the Palestinian territory would be far from easy.

In controlling Gaza, the Israeli army also faces a challenge in terms of running civilian and administrative affairs for this large number of people, including organising the delivery of humanitarian aid.

The US-sponsored Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, instituted in late May to distribute aid to Gaza’s hungry people, has come under mounting criticism for its mismanagement of aid distribution and turning into a death trap for the people of Gaza, dozens of whom have been killed so far while racing against each other to get food.

Egyptian concerns

The Israeli army prepares the evacuation plan for northern Gaza, apparently on the road to imposing military control over this Palestinian enclave, at a time when Israel and Hamas are locked in indirect negotiations in Doha.

The negotiations aim at hammering out a 60-day ceasefire between the two sides and the release of ten living Israeli hostages in Hamas’ custody, along with the remains of almost half of the 30 dead hostages.

The same expected ceasefire and hostage release deal is expected to be at the centre of talks between Netanyahu and Trump during the former’s current visit to the US.

Egypt is heavily involved in mediating the ceasefire talks, together with Qatar and the US.

In a way, the evacuation plan can be seen as a form of pressure applied by Netanyahu over Hamas, one aiming at opening the Gaza-ruling group’s eyes to the dire consequences of not negotiating seriously to reach an end to the current war with Israel.

This aligns with President Trump’s recent remarks that things will not improve if Hamas fails to clinch a deal with Israel, but will get worse.

Nevertheless, the same pressure card, if it turns out to be one, may also put Egypt in a corner, analysts in Cairo said.

“Egypt will expectedly follow all diplomatic means to make its concerns clear to everybody,” al-Dehi said.

“It will also take all the necessary measures to protect its borders,” he added.

Nightmare scenario

Cairo has been warning against the displacement scenario from the very beginning of the conflict in October 2023.

In his first address after the eruption of fighting between Hamas and Israel after the October 7 attacks in southern Israel, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi advised the people of Gaza to stay put, otherwise they will not be allowed to return to their territory.

Then later, the Egyptian president described plans to displace the people of Gaza, including President Trump’s plan to turn Gaza into a “Middle East Riviera” as an “act of injustice” Egypt cannot be party to.

In rejecting the displacement scenario, Egypt has national and Arab considerations, analysts said.

They stressed that Egypt takes its territorial integrity very seriously and is in no way willing to allow anyone, regardless of who they are, to imperil its integrity.

In October 2023, Sisi warned that the relocation of the people of Gaza into Sinai could entangle Egypt in Israel-Hamas hostilities, which would open the door for threats to the 1973 Egypt-Israel peace treaty.

He even suggested the temporary relocation of the people of Gaza to the Negev Desert until Israel is done with the mission of eradicating Hamas.

In another, Egypt firmly opposes Israel’s occupation of Gaza, believing this occupation would be followed by the displacement of Palestinians from the occupied West Bank, which will kill Palestinian statehood dreams forever.

Egypt adopts a policy that backs the establishment of an independent Palestinian state on the 1967 lines, with East Jerusalem as its capital.

Egyptian opposition to the occupation of Gaza and the displacement of its residents into Sinai has, meanwhile, fuelled a series of Egyptian security measures in Sinai, including the deployment of additional troops and equipment in this territory, which raised objections in Israel.

Analysts in Cairo expect more Egyptian security measures in Sinai to follow Netanyahu’s orders for the army to prepare a plan for the evacuation of Gaza’s residents to southern Gaza.

These expected measures will be grounded in Egyptian fears from the prospect of hundreds of thousands of hungry and scared Gaza residents storming into the Egyptian side of the border, analysts said.

“Egypt is ready to defend its territories against Israeli plans for the displacement of the Palestinians,” Abdel Meguid said.

“As a state, Egypt abides by international law, which gives it the right to defend itself against other countries that want to mess with its national security,” he added.