Open the Rafah Crossing Now!

A new massacre in Gaza took place, in which more than 400 martyrs were killed in the Jabalia refugee camp. Known for its resilience, the camp has been the birthplace of generations of resistance leaders. It has also been ground zero from which several uprisings started. The genocide continues, and the Zionist killing machine strikes indiscriminately right and left, north and south, across the Gaza strip, which has been under siege for years – from the Zionist state one side and the Abdel Fattah al-Sisi regime on the other side.

After three weeks of brutal battles and massacres by the Israeli military, the stench of the Egyptian regime’s complicity is overwhelming, surpassing the smell of machineguns, the debris of the fallen buildings, and the accumulating dead bodies left behind east of the Egyptian borders in Gaza. So far, the Egyptian regime has remained passive, despite the various pleas coming from the Palestinian resistance, relief organizations, and the Palestinian people, demanding Egypt not to remain a mere spectator.

The demand is for the Egyptian regime to do more than just plead for aid to be allowed into Gaza, but to open the Rafah crossing for the injured to come to Egypt and for the aid to go to Gaza. All the while the Egyptian regime has continued to keep the crossing closed and has instead lied to its people and to the world. The Egyptian regime claims that the crossing is open and uses the excuse that Israel “doesn’t allow” the aid to enter or for injured to leave the enclave. Not only that, but the Egyptian regime has also been sending trucks carrying aid to the Israeli checkpoints before entering Gaza. This is a humiliating and passive role to assume for a regime that claims to hold a leadership position in the situation and in which describes itself as the “older sister” with a “leading role”.

To accentuate the sheer absurdity of the situation, the regime’s Prime Minister Mustafa Madbouly organized a celebratory conference today in front of the Rafah crossing. With Egyptian flags in the background, he declared publicly that Egypt is against abandoning the Palestinian cause – as if taking measures like opening the crossing, receiving the injured, and sending aid were a part of a conspiracy against the Palestinians and Egypt!

Indeed, we are against the displacement of Palestinians to Sinai, as the Palestinians themselves are the first to reject it on the grounds that this is exactly what the Zionist entity wants. But claiming, as Sisi does, that the very opening of the crossing is a scheme for displacement is a deceptive false narrative, especially coming from the same President who, over the past decade, ceded Egyptian territory as seen in cases like Tiran and Sanafir, granting significant land to Gulf sheikhs, and permitting the Israeli air force to conduct strikes against alleged “terrorist targets” in Sinai.

Obstructing the plan to displace Palestinians from Gaza means that we support the resistance, we support the opening of the Rafah crossing and allowing the injured through. We support cutting diplomatic ties with the enemy and withdrawing the Egyptian ambassador from Tel Aviv as well as with ending dependence on Israeli gas imports for electricity generation. We support allowing forcibly displaced Sinai residents to return to their villages, towns, and cities, which were demolished by the Egyptian army in what it referred to as the war on “terrorism”.