Weeks after a cease-fire in Gaza, thousands of Palestinians who left for neighboring Egypt are grappling with the question of when they could return home, rejecting the mass displacement proposed by US President Donald Trump.
Trump’s proposal to evict large parts of Gaza’s population and send residents en masse to Egypt and Jordan has been condemned across the Arab world as a form of ethnic cleansing.
“You’re talking about a million and a half people, and we’re just cleaning up the whole thing,” Trump said.
Asked if it was a temporary or long-term solution, he said: “It could be both.”
Egypt says it will never participate in the mass displacement of Palestinians, which President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi has described as an “act of injustice”.
However, there are already about 100,000 Palestinians in Egypt, who say they do not know how or when they will be able to return.
During the Gaza war, the border was largely sealed, and the vast majority of the 2.3 million residents were left homeless and forced into temporary shelters inside the territory.
There were, however, months when some people were allowed to leave, including Palestinians. with foreign passports, their close relatives or seriously ill patients evacuated for humanitarian reasons.
Most do not have long-term residency permits in Egypt and consider their stay to be temporary, surviving on small trade or savings. The ceasefire agreement that halted the fighting in January has yet to be resolved their fate.
Some say they will return as soon as they have the chance.
“There is nothing better than your own country,” said Hussien Farahat, a father of two.
Others, however, say the personal decision is more complicated, with no homes to return to returned.
“Even if the war is over, we still don’t know our fate and no one has mentioned those who stayed in Cairo. Do we go back or what will happen to us? And if we go back, what will happen to us? Our houses are gone” , said Abeer Kamal, who has lived in Cairo since November 2023 and sells handmade bags with her sisters.
While Gazans in Egypt may differ in their personal agendas, they all say they reject any proposal by Trump to purge large numbers of Palestinians from the Gaza.
