Despite their great sympathy for the residents of Palestine and widespread condemnation of Israel for the "genocide" it is committing in Gaza - none of the leaders of the Arab countries are willing to accept refugees from Gaza.
The President of Egypt, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, was the first to be stressed by the situation in which he would have to take Gazan refugees into his country. In a statement he made about a month and a half ago, he said: "The Egyptian people strongly oppose the arrival of Palestinian refugees from the Gaza Strip to the Sinai Peninsula. Such a move will turn Sinai into a focal point from which attacks against Israel would be launched - and Egypt will become a base for terrorist operations."
Egypt was the first to demand the transfer of humanitarian equipment to Gaza, but strongly opposed the idea advanced in Israel that refugees could voluntarily move to Egypt (!).
At a press conference in Cairo alongside the Chancellor of Germany, Olaf Schulz, El-Sisi said that the Gaza Strip is actually under Israeli control - and suggested that the Palestinians be evacuated to the Negev "until they deal with the extremists" of Hamas. About 2.4 million Palestinians live in the Gaza Strip. At the beginning of the war, many of them flocked towards the Rafah crossing, which was closed.
Egypt opposes them reaching its territory and causing a refugee crisis. Sisi said that if his citizens were called upon to do so, millions of them would take to the streets and demonstrate against the passage of Gazans to Sinai.
Israel took in 40,000 refugees from Ukraine
For the sake of comparison, following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Israel took in 40,000 Ukrainians in the war and even the demands from it for taking in more refugees were higher. Most of the refugees were not Jewish at all and received full rights and legal backing for their absorption in Israel.
As a reminder, during the days of the fighting, the Islamic Jihad launched a rocket at Israel that accidentally hit a hospital in Gaza, which did not prevent them from accusing Israel of bombing the hospital and killing 500 Gazans. In the Muslim world, three days of mourning were announced and there were many demonstrations against Israel.
King Abdullah of Jordan condemned the aggression, but here, too, similarly to El-Sisi, he repeatedly emphasized that he would not accept even one refugee from Gaza: "Accepting refugees is a red line. There will be no refugees in Jordan or Egypt. The danger of expanding the war in Gaza is real, and its consequences are severe ", he said.
Turkish President Erdogan has not missed an opportunity since the outbreak of the war, and has repeatedly criticized Israel for the attacks in Gaza: "Israel is carrying out a massacre in Gaza in the dark, so that the world will not know," he said, "we will declare Israel a war criminal." But he, like other leaders of Arab countries, did not offer to take in refugees from Gaza.
The hypocrisy of the leaders of Arab countries screams out to the heavens. Above all, they sympathize with the "suffering of the Palestinians", but are not willing to accept even one Gazan.
