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Gazans in Egypt: hostility and exploitation
Summary: Palestinians fleeing Gaza to Egypt are easy targets for rent gouging and resentment and they find themselves denied any of the limited rights to basic services that refugees would in other circumstances be allowed to access.
Most of the more than 748,000 refugees and asylum-seekers in Egypt are Sudanese, fleeing the civil war that started in April 2023, but since the start of the war in Palestine more than 100,000 Palestinians have also been able to enter Egypt from Gaza. But having already paid thousands of dollars to cross over, when they arrive they face myriad social and economic problems, aggravated by a complete lack of official institutional support because - unlike other refugees - due to long standing historical reasons Palestinians are excluded from the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) mandate.
Forced Migration Review notes:
Arab states have argued that as the UN is responsible for Palestinian expulsion – the General Assembly Resolution 181 in 1947 approved the Partition Plan for Palestine – the UN has therefore an ongoing responsibility to develop mechanisms for repatriation and compensation. Allowing Palestinians to be protected by UNHCR would prejudice their case by encouraging third-country resettlement.
At the same time, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) which provides services to Palestinian refugees around the region does not operate in Egypt either. The Cairo Review explains: “The reason why Egypt did not allow UNRWA to operate in the country was due to its desire to safeguard the Palestinian identity and allow their eventual return after the liberation of Palestine.”
As such, Palestinian refugees in Egypt get no assistance from UNRWA or the Egyptian government and are not able to register with UNHCR either.
Since the UNHCR facilitates access to protection and essential services for refugees in Egypt on behalf of the Egyptian government, this means Palestinians are denied access to basic services such as health and education. They only have a legal right to stay in the country by way of residence permits that have to be renewed every 45 days.
Without long term residency papers, this means Palestinian refugees cannot open bank accounts and businesses, access medical services, apply for visas to other countries or enrol their children in Egyptian public schools. They are denied the right to own a mobile phone SIM card, the right to work and to benefit from assistance or services provided by civil and developmental organisations.
An investigation by the New Arab website quotes Nour Khalil, a researcher specialising in immigration and border policy issues and the Executive Director of the Refugees Platform in Egypt:
If I was deprived of the right to register, and of the right to obtain an official residency permit, I would also be denied the other rights, and legal protection would be withdrawn from me; if I was murdered today there would be no punishment… they are denied the right to appeal against their deportation, as they are unable to appoint a lawyer to raise a legal claim. All of this because they don’t hold a valid residency permit.
The same article mentions a Palestinian man named Ahmed Saeed (pseudonym) who said that his daughter had been subjected to a kidnapping attempt. He did not file a complaint as he does not hold valid papers to stay in Egypt.
Without access to public healthcare Palestinians have to go to the private sector for medical treatment, where costs are high and refugees are also discriminated against. Hospitals sometimes insist on payment in advance or refuse to provide services altogether. One local refugee agency reported some refugees died due to the lack of medical care.
Since renewing a residency permit every 45 days in Egypt’s labyrinthine, under-resourced and corrupt bureaucracy is impossible, Palestinians quickly find themselves without legal permission to be in Egypt at all; any foreigner in Egypt who does not have legal residency can be arrested at any time. This means Palestinians have to be careful how they travel and move circumspectly, avoiding long journeys or certain parts of Cairo where there is a high chance of being stopped or arrested.
Often the Egyptian authorities swoop on migrant neighbourhoods in days-long campaigns targeting refugees and asylum seekers and making dozens of arrests. Once detained, anything can happen to them and Human Rights Watch and similar organisations have previously documented serious abuses against asylum seekers and refugees by the Egyptian authorities. Usually however the police are just looking for some hard currency and let them go after demanding and securing a bribe.
The Egyptian authorities are also known to refoul refugees, although this is against international human rights law; thousands of Sudanese refugees have been collectively expelled back to Sudan, with the UNHCR estimating that 3,000 people were deported to Sudan from Egypt in September 2023 alone.
There have been no known cases of Palestinians being refouled to Gaza since the war started but this is not surprising given the extensive restrictions at the border and because the Rafah crossing has been completely closed since 7 May. If the restrictions were eased as part of a ceasefire deal, given how the Egyptian authorities treat other refugees and asylum seekers, refugees from Gaza could be at risk of refoulement. This may explain why Cairo is insisting that as any part of a deal the IDF evacuate the Philadelphi Corridor - the strip of land that runs the entirety of the border between Gaza and Egypt and includes the Rafah crossing - and why Netanyahu is insisting the IDF remain.
As Egypt does not have refugee camps, displaced people live among ordinary Egyptians where besides having to manage all the same harsh social and economic problems citizens face, they are also subject to widespread public stigmatisation and discrimination.
While Sudanese and refugees of sub-Saharan origin face open racism, Palestinians face another kind of discrimination, born out of their systematic denigration in Egyptian state media which since the late 1970s has projected Palestinians as being 'ungrateful' and accused them of having brought about their own expulsions through their greed and willingness to sell their land to Zionists. As a result, many Egyptians believe that Palestinians are rich and influential and deserve neither sympathy nor assistance. Gaza evacuees say they fear disclosing their identity and face prejudice from Egyptian landlords who view them as a bag of money.
In June Al Monitor reported on discrimination against Palestinians accessing housing:
One of the greatest difficulties for Gazans living in Cairo is finding housing. “Although my wife has an Egyptian passport, we had difficulties finding accommodation,” Mohammed Telbani, a 30-year-old from Gaza City, explains to Al-Monitor. “We felt a certain prejudice from the Egyptians. They prefer not to rent apartments to us.” … The displaced Gazans in Cairo are spread throughout the city, although the main districts they find shelter in are Giza, Faisal, Imbaba and Ain Shams, where speculation is developing and rents for Palestinians are much higher than market prices.”
As UN Habitat explains:
In areas of the city where refugees have settled they compete with poor local residents for scarce resources and limited services and, as such, they are vulnerable to aggression, violence and exploitation. Egyptian residents in these areas have very similar needs for assistance and support initiatives as (do) the refugees.
With ordinary Egyptians caught in a cycle of rampant inflation, rising rents and strains on services and resources resentment towards Gazan refugees will only be exacerbated as the ceasefire talks stall and the war drags on.
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