As hundreds of thousands of Palestinians abandon their homes in northern Gaza and flee to the coastal strip’s south, alarm is mounting in Egypt that the deepening humanitarian crisis will be thrust across its borders.
Egypt, the only country other than Israel to share a frontier with besieged Gaza, is already being urged by the US and other western states to allow Palestinians holding foreign passports to exit through its Rafah crossing with the strip.
But Cairo’s main fear is that the longer Israel’s offensive on Gaza continues, deepening the suffering of the Palestinians, the more Egypt will face pressure to accept a flood of refugees into Sinai, a sparsely populated and arid peninsula with a history of instability.