Egypt’s head of the state on Tuesday said his nation was prepared to “sacrifice millions of lives” for the Sinai peninsula in an evident reference to reports of Israel’s intelligence service’s wartime draft proposition to move move the Gaza Strip’s 2.3 million people to the region.
“Egypt will never allow anything to be imposed on it,” Mostafa Madbouly said, adding regional issues would not be solved at the country’s “expense.”
“We’re ready to sacrifice our souls so that no one would tamper with our lands…Sinai is Egypt’s most precious spot in the hearts of Egyptians as every family has a family member who was made martyr, got injured, or did his military service in Sinai,” the prime minister stressed.
He highlighted that the only serious and comprehensive development plan for Sinai was set under President Abdel Fatah al-Sisi in 2014 and that it was in-progress. He showcased that the government had already created 11 Bedouin residential clusters in North and Middle Sinai.
As for connecting Sinai with the mainland, the prime minister showcased that 11 tunnels had been extended beneath the Suez Canal for that purpose in addition to introducing Bardawil International Airport in Middle Sinai.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office, however, downplayed the paper as a hypothetical exercise.
But its conclusions deepened long-standing Egyptian fears that Israel wants to make Gaza into Egypt’s problem, and revived for Palestinians memories of their greatest trauma — the uprooting of hundreds of thousands of people who fled or were forced from their homes during the fighting surrounding Israel’s creation in 1948.
So far more than 8,300 Palestinians, the vast majority of them civilians, have been killed since Israel went to war against Hamas after its October 7 attack, Al Arabiya reports.
