Arab Nations Won't take in Palestinians from Gaza

Gazans Attempting to Flee to Egypt

Many have criticized Israel's actions as inhumane and that far too many innocent Palestinian civilians are dying in the crossfire of their war against Hamas.  However, if the neighboring Arab nations truly care about the well-being of the Palestinians of Gaza, then why don't they let them in?  There are 20 other Arab nations in the Middle East, so why don't these nations let these people enter and allow them to go back once the conflict is over?  Hamas deliberately uses the civilians of Gaza as human shields, the whole world knows this.  These civilians would be out of the danger zone and the war would end much sooner with far less loss of life if neighboring Egypt would open their doors and allow the civilians of Gaza to enter and get out of harms way.  

So what's preventing these Arab nations from allowing them in?  Well, history shows that many of these nations are in truth, not too fond of the Palestinians.  After Israel took over the West Bank after the 1967 War, thousands of Palestinian Arabs, along with PLO leadership, fled to Jordan.  Once established in the country, the PLO based themselves in Jordan and launched ongoing raids into Israel.  However, the PLO did not stop there.  Yasir Arafat also began to established a "state within a state" in the nation of Jordan.  He used his terrorists to begin taking over portions of the country and imposing taxes on citizens to help fund his ongoing campaign against Israel.  When Jordanian police officers tried to stop this, they were killed.  It wasn't long before Arafat began to try and overthrow Jordanian King Hussain & take over the country himself.  Former PLO terrorists Tass Saada who was Yasir Arafat's personal driver confessed that he himself attempted to assassinate the Prince of Jordan during this time period.  Eventually, King Hussain got fed up and on Sept. 1970 (Known as Black September), he ordered his military to carry out an all out attack against the PLO terrorist factions operating in his country (Link to Video).  Over 25,000 Palestinian militants and civilians were killed by Jordanian forces while their leadership fled to neighboring Lebanon. 

Bourj al-Barajneh: Palestinian Refugee Camp in Beruit

When Lebanon took in the PLO and thousands of Palestinian refugees after Black September, the nation became destabilized  and led to clashes between Lebanese Christian militias and Palestinian militants (mainly the PLO).  This ultimately plunged the nation into a disastrous Civil War that lasted from 1975-1990.  Over 150,000 people were killed and a million more displaced.  Most Palestinians who remained in Lebanon are subject to state-sanctioned discrimination and are banned from over 39 professions, including medicine, pharmacy, dentistry, and law.  Even Palestinians born in Lebanon are denied citizenship and are subjected to state sanctioned discrimination.  So suffice to say, neither Jordan, nor Lebanon are eager to take in more Palestinians, even on a temporary basis.  

Syria is still involved in their own Civil War, so obviously that's not a very go option, so what then of Egypt?  Well as it presently stands, Egypt already has 9 million refugees, 300,000 of whom fled from war-ravaged Sudan.  The Egyptian President el-Sissi fears that if more refugees come in from Gaza, it will destabilize the nation even further as many would not return to Gaza, and even if they did, el-Sissi says it would take months before the fighting was over between Israel and Hamas.  Moreover, the Egyptian leaders have already witnessed their nation nearly fall to the Muslim Brotherhood and they know that Hamas is the armed wing of the Brotherhood and that they actively supported the Brotherhood when they tried to take over Egypt during the Arab Spring.  The Egyptian leaders therefore fear that these same militants follow the civilians of Gaza into Egypt and will help the Brotherhood regain enough strength to topple their government and take over the country.   

But what of the Gulf Nations like say Kuwait?  They're not in conflict with anyone and are not near the border region, couldn't they take in some Palestinians from Gaza.  Well the fact is, they did once before.  Prior to the 1991 Gulf War over 300,000 Palestinians "refugees" lived in Kuwait.  However, the PLO, along with most of these refugees supported Saddam Hussain invading and annexing the country.  So once the Kuwaiti government regained control, nearly all of the Palestinians, which represented nearly 18% of the country at that time, were expelled from Kuwait (Link to Video).

So it seems that everywhere Palestinians refugees go, Palestinian militants follow, and wherever the Palestinian militants go, destabilization arises, which eventually leads to armed conflict.  Thus we can see that while Arab nations don't seem to have much issue with Palestinian militants fighting Israel, they don't want to have to fight them themselves, and therefore, they find that the easiest way to avoid this is to simply not allow Palestinians into their states at all, even if it's only on a temporary basis.  This sadly puts the Palestinians of Gaza into a terrible situation.  Israel doesn't want the civilians hurt and is doing their utmost to get them to move out of the way so they can take out Hamas and ensure that attacks like what happened on Oct. 7th don't happen again.  Yet these same civilians are unable to flee Gaza for other Arab nations because these same nations have had to deal with destabilization and Civil Conflicts in the past, with Palestinians often at the center of it, and they don't want to deal with it again.  Simply put, it's a lose/lose situation, for everybody.  

Sources:

Darwish, Nonie.  Now They Call Me Infidel: Why I Renounced Jihad for America, Israel, and the War on Terror.  New York: Penguin Group, 2006.

Gabriel, Brigitte.  Because They Hate: A Survivor of Islamic Terror Warns America.  New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2006

Glick Caroline.  The Israeli Solution.  New York: Crown Forum, 2014.

Jeffrey, Jack and Samy Magdy.  "Why Egypt and Other Arab Countries are Unwilling to take in Palestinian Refugees from Gaza."  Associated Press.  Oct. 18, 2023.  Accessed from https://apnews.com/article/palestinian-jordan-egypt-israel-refugee-502c06d004767d4b64848d878b66bd3d

Mrou, Bassam.  "Stay or Go: Palestinians in Lebanon Plunged into Poverty."  Associated Press.  Oct. 21, 2022.  Accessed from https://apnews.com/article/middle-east-syria-beirut-lebanon-business-4965d46cbc27cf17b8876d0247f0b4b6.

Saada, Tass and Dean Merrill.  Once an Arafat Man.  Clarksville, Tennessee: Riggins International Rights Service, Inc., 2008.