Israeli Officers Want To Export Palestinians To Egyptian Deserts
additional reporting by Mohammed
al-Saleh
JERUSALEM, March 15 (IslamOnline) - A senior Israeli army officer said Wednesday neighboring Egypt and Jordan should grant millions of Palestinians, crammed in the Gaza strip and the West Bank, parts of their vast desert land to help solve the Palestinian problem.
"Israel should not shoulder the responsibility for solving the Palestinian problem," said General Avi Fine in statements published Wednesday. "Both Egypt and Jordan should take a great role in solving this problem if they are care about political stability in the region."
"Why should hundreds of thousands of Palestinians remained locked in Gaza while [Egypt's] Sinai Peninsula is at least three times the size of Gaza, the West Bank and Israel, all put together?"
The Israeli general said that using the Sinai desert was the ideal solution for the crowds in the Palestinian territories. He also said there were vast desert land in Jordan that could absorb Palestinians.
"There's no other solution," Fine said. "We have created Jewish settlements on the West Bank and Gaza. The only solution is for Egypt and Jordan is to take the Palestinians."
Egypt and Jordan are the only Arab countries that signed treaties aimed at normalization of relationship with the Jewish state. Jordan signed an accord in 1994.
Egypt, the first Arab country to sign a peace treaty with Israel in 1979, has played an important intermediary role in the peace process and tried to serve as a counterweight to perceived U.S. bias towards the Jewish state. Cairo has never publicly offered to receive Palestinians on Egyptian land.
Egypt's official policy has been to deny Palestinian refugees Egyptian citizenship so as to keep the Palestinian problem intact and shove it on to Israel, which came into existence in 1948 at the expense of what was then Palestine.
Normalization of relations with Israel has been one of the most controversial issues between Arab countries, causing many debates between those who are for normalization and those against it.
Relations between Israel and its Arab neighbors became tense once Israel started cracking down on Palestinians protesting Israeli transgression against Muslim holy sites in Jerusalem on September 28th.
Egypt withdrew its ambassador to Tel Aviv to protest the excessive use of force by Israelis, which has led to the death of over 400 people, most of them Palestinian, and many of them children.
Jordan has placed on hold the decision to appoint a new ambassador to the Israel.
