The 365 km² Gaza Strip has remained a hot potato in Israel-Egypt relations since its conquest by the Egyptian Army in 1948 as part of Egypt’s failed attempt to annihilate the newly-born State of Israel. Egypt invaded Israel along two main axes, reaching the outskirts of Jerusalem and only 20 km. short of Tel Aviv, but the Israel Defense Forces pushed off this offensive. These battles generated a wave of refugees that found haven in the Gaza Strip, which remained under Egyptian military control until 1967.
Since 1948, and up until the current partial release of some of the Israeli babies, children, and women taken hostage by Hamas terrorists, the Egyptians have been significantly involved in the politics and economy of the Gaza Strip. The Egyptians locked the residents of Gaza and the refugees of the 1948 War in the Gaza Strip, and, with the backing of the United Nations, still deny them the right to rebuild their lives in all Arab countries, including in the adjacent Sinai Peninsula of Egypt. This harsh policy was one of the major and long-term catalysts for the intensifying human stagnation of now circa 1.8 million inhabitants within the Strip.
Beyond the abduction, mutilation, burning, rape, and murder of 1,200 Israelis and other nationals, the Hamas terrorist invasion of Israel on October 7 destroyed many Israeli agricultural villages. This barbarian murder-fest led the IDF to conquer the northern Gaza Strip and the Hamas-infested Gaza metropolis as part of Israel’s goal to destroy Hamas terror capabilities. As civilians were ordered to move south, the southern Gaza Strip became a haven for most of Gaza’s residents.
The battles in the northern Strip generated significant damage and destruction of buildings utilized by Hamas. Damage to the immense terror-tunnel system further destabilized the metropolis’s substrate. Major portions of the metropolis are considerably incapacitated and cannot be simply fixed. Rather, the damaged and destroyed structures must be completely torn down. The tunneled – and consequently exploded and bulldozed – soil must undergo extensive environmental and engineering rehabilitation.
In other words, the metropolis has to be fully evacuated, redesigned, monitored, and only then rebuilt to provide habitable and economic conducive conditions. Such an effort requires unique expertise and immense funding and will take considerable time that cannot be calculated. Therefore, the war is anticipated to end with a unique humanitarian challenge of how to construct a better future for the people of Gaza.Since Israel’s unconditional turnover of the Gaza Strip to the Palestinian Authority in 2005, Gazans have completely failed to generate a productive Palestinian-administered entity, despite generous economic support, mainly from America, Europe, Qatar, and the UN. This may be associated with the coupled effect of an intrinsic hatred-focused, fanatic, anti-Israel Islamic culture, and links with Iran, along with limited geographical conditions, poor natural and human resources, and a high population density. This situation raises serious doubts that any type of future self-sustainable efforts will yield a stable and free socioeconomic culture and promising future in the Strip. A creative solution is needed ASAP.
Sinai's promising characteristics
The adjoining Sinai Peninsula, in essence, is the exact opposite of the Gaza Strip, comprising one of the most suitable places on Earth to provide the people of Gaza with hope and a peaceful future. Covering 60,000 km² (165 times larger than the Strip), its population is barely around one-third of Gaza’s, making it one of the emptiest places in the Mediterranean region. Although under Egyptian governance, it is an integral geographic-geological continuation of Israel and the Gaza Strip, with which it shares a 200 km. and 14 km. long border, respectively.
Therefore, the geographic setting of the Mediterranean coast of northern Sinai is also a physical continuation of the Gaza Strip with ample, shallow groundwater in the northeast. Here, due to the intensive smuggling of arms to Hamas via Sinai in the last few years, Egypt fully destroyed the residential infrastructure bordering the Gaza Strip, and expelled the local population.
In northwestern Sinai, Egypt has invested immensely in building for agriculture, including freshwater canals. Furthermore, Egypt has surprisingly wired Sinai with excellent infrastructure, overshooting its civilian and industrial needs. These include an array of paved roads and highways connected by tunnels beneath the Suez Canal to mainland Egypt.
The facts demonstrate that the northern Sinai Peninsula is an ideal location to develop a spacious resettlement for the people of Gaza. Its open areas, along with the existing infrastructure, can easily host large-scale development projects that, if led by the Chinese and supported by local labor, for example, can easily mature in just one to two years.
Firm American and international guidance lined with financial and operative support can surely pave the way to this creative and prosperous solution and jointly help Egypt’s dire demographic and economic situation that is challenging its political authority. Israel will also be cooperative in sharing its hi-tech-oriented agricultural capabilities with Egypt as it did following the Peace Treaty in the early 1980s.
If Egypt bravely chooses to change its rigid, old-fashioned policy of keeping Palestinian Gazans in constant distress and consents to such an endeavor, its geopolitical gains will be threefold: It will be hailed by the international community as the savior of the dire plight of Gazans; it will strengthen its status as a leader of the Arab world; and it will finally fulfill its 30+-year-old plan to settle the Sinai and strengthen its control of this zone.
However, history has taught us that Gazans, despite their complaints about their humanitarian situation, may object towards genuine rehabilitation programs. This stubbornness substantially relies on their desire to destroy Israel, which repeatedly comes at their own expense. The ongoing obliteration of Hamas, which terrorizes Palestinian Authority officials and many Gaza residents, may pave the way to the emergence of the proposed Sinai solution, if presented in a wise and discrete manner that conforms to the Middle East mentality.
The writer is a geologist and geographer, and a faculty member of the Department of Geography and Environment at Bar-Ilan University.