Hundreds of Egyptians protest at Gaza border against displacement

CAIRO (AFP): Hundreds of people attended a protest near Egypt’s border with Gaza on Friday against a plan floated by US President Donald Trump to move Palestinians from the territory to Egypt and Jordan, Egyptian media reported.

State-linked TV Al-Qahera News showed footage of hundreds of protesters waving Egyptian and Palestinian flags near the Rafah border crossing — a highly secured military zone accessible only under official escort.

Trump last week proposed a plan to “clean out” the Gaza Strip, and for Jordan and Egypt to take in Palestinians from the war-ravaged territory.

Both states have strongly rejected the idea, but on Thursday Trump again insisted that “we do a lot for them, and they’re going to do it”.

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi on Wednesday had said the “displacement of the Palestinian people from their land is an injustice that we cannot take part in”.

Sisi has in the past described the prospect as a “red line” that would threaten Egypt’s national security.

Egypt is a key US ally in the region, and was the only country besides Israel to receive an exemption from Trump’s foreign aid freeze last week.

Since the start of the Israel-Hamas war, Egypt has played a delicate balancing act — maintaining its mediator role in the conflict while appeasing its pro-Palestinian population.

“If I were to ask this of the Egyptian people, all of them would take to the streets to say ‘no’,” Sisi said on Wednesday of the proposed plan.

Since 2013, public protests have been banned in Egypt except for those approved by authorities.

Early in the war, tens of thousands of people took to the streets in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza.

But virtually no rallies have been allowed since October 20, 2023 when a state-sanctioned protest veered towards Cairo’s Tahrir Square, site of the 2011 uprising that toppled longtime president Hosni Mubarak.