[wat10000]

They've also been cooperating on blockading Gaza for a couple of decades. Israel gets most of the attention for that, mostly rightfully so, but people seem to forget that there's a border with Egypt too and that has also had very limited access.

[Yizahi]

Egypt learned on other's mistakes for once. They saw how Jordan welcomed Palestinians on their land and they repaid the kindness by launching a coup against the government in 1970. No wonder not a single anti-Israeli coalition country is willing to deal with Palestinians directly at their own home and are keeping borders watertight :) .

[shykes]

Don't forget that after being expelled from Jordan, Arafat relocated to Lebanon where he proceeded to take over the South ("Fatahland"), start a civil war, and pull in Israel with constant attacks across the border. Until Israel kicked them out in 1982, the Palestinians played the disruptive, parasitic role in Lebanon that Hezbollah plays today. In fact, Hezbollah rose to power precisely by filling the void left by the Palestinians in 82.

[constantius]

You're probably aware of your bigotry, as the stupid smiley at the end of your comment seems to suggest, but your reasoning only serves to support the pre-made conclusion of 'Palestinians are genetically evil'.

[Der_Einzige]

How can you not acknowledge that essentialism is basically correct?

Some cultures go thousands of years without ever forming civilizations that escape barbarism. Slavs in particular seem especially unable to find their way out of tyranny, for literally thousands of years.

Sometimes you call a spade a spade. Essences exist. Copes against it like “intersectionality” have been thoroughly rejected by the body politic and that’s why you see zoomer and gen alpha talking like they’re all from 4chan - because 4chan was the only place where essentialism was not only accepted but encouraged.

[wat10000]

We need a name for this genre where some heinous idea is presented as if it was obviously correct, with no evidence because apparently it's so obvious it doesn't even need any.

[tolerance]

> and that’s why you see zoomer and gen alpha talking like they’re all from 4chan - because 4chan was the only place where essentialism was not only accepted but encouraged.

This bodes well for the future, you say?

[greedo]

Pure racism.

[ethbr1]

As an Arab friend summed it up, 'All Arab governments like to trumpet the Palestinian cause when it serves them, but none of them are willing to lift a finger to help the Palestinians.'

[anvuong]

Are you sure? Jordanians tried and it burned them spectacularly. And if my memory served, Egypt also tried to some extent and eventually was eagerly and happily offloading Gaza into Israel's hands. Then, they built a huge border defensive line to keep Gazan out that would make Trump's Mexican border a joke in comparison.

At some points people need to wonder why.

[shykes]

Egypt is trying to have their cake and eat it too. Total crackdown on islamists at home - whether Hamas or any other incarnation of the Muslim Brotherhood - but also making sure they remain a thorn in the side of Egypt's rivals. See for example the massive smuggling tunnels discovered by the IDF in Rafah in 2024, which had been keeping Hamas covertly resupplied through Egypt. Hard to imagine that Egypt was unaware.

[constantius]

> At some points people need to wonder why.

Could you imagine me making the same argument with other historically 'unwanted' groups, like for example Black people or Jews? If these populations keeep getting kicked out and marginalised through millennia, surely you have to start wondering why.

[Der_Einzige]

We need actual coherent answers to that question, because whenever the myriad number of kids in school ask such questions and get non answers, they start to actually buy the “global conspiracy” framing of everything.

It’s probably more anti-Semitic to lie and say “jews don’t control Hollywood” rather than try to explain correctly why they do. Yet, most people don’t even want to try to explain historical factors.

[wat10000]

What is the answer to why Jews are historically persecuted, if not "people are awful and minorities are convenient scapegoats"?

[ceejayoz]

To be fair, part of the peace deal between Egypt and Israel gave Israel some control over the crossing, and they seized it entirely during the war.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rafah_Border_Crossing

> The Rafah crossing was opened by Israel after the 1979 peace treaty and remained under Israeli control until 2005...

> Under a 2007 agreement between Egypt and Israel, Egypt controls the crossing but imports through the Rafah crossing require Israeli approval.

[trollbridge]

This is to a large part to give Egypt plausible deniability. They don’t want to deal with Gaza, refugees, or a humanitarian crisis, but also don’t want the political fallout of taking action like the Israelis do.

[ceejayoz]

Eh, 50/50. Israel would not respond positively to Egypt throwing the gates wide open.

[shykes]

On the contrary, I believe Israel would be delighted. It would lessen the humanitarian burden on them, and force Egypt to deal with the Hamas problem more directly. It will never happen, though. No Arab country will "throw the gates wide open" for Palestinians. They have done so before, several times, and it went very badly.

[don_esteban]

The Israeli openly proposed for the Gaza Palestinians to move to Egypt (effectively ethnic cleansing Gaza, their obvious goal), not that long after 7.10.

Egypt said 'HELL NO', first, because they don't want to deal with Palestinians (both political and economic nightmare), and second because it would have been viewed as ceding to Israelis and helping them cleanse Gaza, which would be highly unpopular among their population.

[ceejayoz]

> The Israeli openly proposed for the Gaza Palestinians to move to Egypt

Yeah, that's not "wide open". Israel would absolutely be happy with a one-way exit gate.

[philistine]

That is very reductive of the whole situation. The Egyptians are not singularly focused on helping Palestinians; it is far more nuanced than that.

Bottom line, Egyptians are not interested in supporting millions of refugees inside their border. So the border stays closed to mass immigration.

[ceejayoz]

All that may be true.

Also true: If Egypt opened the border and Israel objected, Israel would take swift military action.

[deepsun]

No, why? Israel would celebrate.

But NONE of the Arab countries want to help Gaza people really.

[pixl97]

At the same time, neither would Egypt. Refugee crisises are messy.

[shykes]

Yes, the "refugee crisis" in Jordan and Lebanon was indeed quite messy...

https://www.thoughtco.com/black-september-jordanian-plo-civi...

https://www.historiascripta.org/post-ww2/the-palestinians-of...

[aprilthird2021]

People don't forget it. But Egypt is a dictatorship aligned with US/Israel, so there's again not much we can do there. Ending foreign aid to Egypt is probably very aligned with ending foreign aid to Israel in terms of popularity among American voters

[woodruffw]

> Ending foreign aid to Egypt is probably very aligned with ending foreign aid to Israel in terms of popularity among American voters

I strongly suspect the average American has absolutely zero sense of how much foreign aid we give Egypt. That's not to contradict your point directly, just that it isn't a very salient part of American politics (unlike Israeli foreign aid).

[BobaFloutist]

> it isn't a very salient part of American politics (unlike Israeli foreign aid).

I feel like Israeli aid, while vastly more salient than it used to be, is still mostly salient as a left-of-center wedge issue, otherwise being about as salient as your average major foreign policy issue - ranking just under the least salient domestic policy issue, which ranks just under the most minor personal quality of any candidate, which ranks under the current state of the economy, which ranks under the current perceived state of the economy. Wow, that's way too many times to use "salient" in one sentence.

And for the record, I'm not arguing about how much people should care, just how much they do.

[woodruffw]

It's also become a right-of-center (right of far-right?) wedge issue in the past 12 months. But I otherwise completely agree with you; I think there's a veritable chasm between how much the media talks about the US's foreign aid (both to Israel and in general) and how much it actually matters to the average voter.

[aprilthird2021]

There's no tension with a policy not being the top or even top 10 priority for voters and the policy being very popular with voters.

[aprilthird2021]

Egypt doesn't actively and loudly influence our politics the way Israel does, part of why it's so much less known. Netanyahu on the other hand pitched our current Iran War disaster to Trump