If the idea is a non-starter, it is because Egypt, which shares a border with Gaza and Israel and has a peace treaty with Israel, has long let it be known that it absolutely rejects any efforts by Israel to subcontract the problem of Gaza to Cairo, whether through forced transfer of the population or otherwise.
Over the decades since the Six Day war in 1967, when Israeli forces first captured the Gaza Strip, which had been under Egyptian military rule, Israeli officials and commentators have periodically pushed the notion that Palestinians in Gaza could be resettled in Egypt.
The suggestion by the US president, Donald Trump, that Gaza’s Palestinian population could be “cleaned out” and moved to Egypt and Jordan is an idea that has long been circulated by the Israeli right.
Egypt’s position has long been straightforward: by virtue of its long occupation of Gaza, Israel is legally responsible for Gaza.
Most recently that notion was floated in a leaked paper by Israel’s intelligence ministry – which prepares studies and policy papers rather than representing the intelligence agencies – a few weeks into the war in Gaza.
