Alwaght- Egypt has rejected reports that it is preparing to a buffer zone that will allow it to take in and shelter Palestinians who could leave Gaza should an expected Israeli invasion of Rafah city on the border with Egypt start.
It at the same time rejected the Israeli push to displace people of Gaza as Israeli army threatens with an imminent Rafah operation.
According to Aljazeera, the head of the Egyptian Information Service, Diaa Rashwan, said in a statement published Friday that Egypt has already had, for a long time and before the current war, a buffer zone and walls in this region, and he pointed out that these are procedures and measures taken by any country in the world to maintain the security of its borders and its sovereignty over its lands.
The Egyptian official reiterated his country’s position of rejecting the displacement of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip since the beginning of the aggression, which was confirmed by President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi and all state authorities dozens of times. He stressed that this position stipulates a complete and irreversible rejection of any forced or voluntary displacement of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip, especially to Egyptian territory.
The news of Egypt building a buffer zone on the border with Gaza was broken by Wall Street Journal for the first time on Thursday.
The newspaper added that the buffer zone, which is located north of Sinai and has an area of approximately 13 square kilometers, is far from residential communities. WSJ also published satellites images showing the bulldozing of soil in the supposed closed area between February 4 and 14.
There have been warnings from international community and regional actors about attacking Rafah where nearly 1.3 million Palestinians are sheltering.
United Nations aid chief Martin Griffiths warned Tuesday that such an offensive could lead to “a slaughter” and leave humanitarian efforts in Gaza “at death’s door.”
He urged Israel to listen to the international community’s warnings against “the dangerous consequences” of a ground invasion, saying “history will not be kind” if those calls are ignored.
Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian has called for an emergency meeting of the Council of Foreign Ministers of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) to discuss the imminent Israeli attack on the city of Rafah in southern Gaza and the humanitarian catastrophe which is unfolding.
This came in a phone call between the top Iranian diplomat and the OIC Secretary-General Hissein Brahim Taha, the Iranian Foreign Ministry said in a statement.
In the call, Abdollahian condemned the Israeli attacks that killed tens of thousands of Palestinians, most of whom were women and children, and referred to the “dangerous humanitarian situation” in northern Gaza, where civilians cannot access food or clean water.
South African government made an “urgent request” to the International Court of Justice Tuesday to determine if Israel’s extended military actions in the southern Gazan city require it to “use its power to prevent further imminent breach of the rights of Palestinians in Gaza.”
