Why a ground operation in the border city would be a violation of the 1979 Camp David peace agreements
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s recent statement concerning the plan to evacuate civilians from Rafah and launch a ground operation to eliminate Hamas brigades in the city wasn’t received well by the Egyptian authorities. In fact, Israel’s military scenario has jeopardized the Camp David Peace Accords between Cairo and Tel Aviv. For the first time since they were signed in 1979, the agreements are in danger of being suspended.
Evacuation plan
On February 9, Netanyahu ordered his army to prepare a “plan for the evacuation” of the civilian population from Rafah, which is currently home to 1.5 million Palestinians displaced from other areas of Gaza.
“It is impossible to achieve the war goal of eliminating Hamas and leave four Hamas battalions in Rafah,” Netanyahu’s office said in a statement.
Shortly afterwards, the Israeli Public Broadcasting Corporation announced that Cairo had threatened to suspend the 1979 bilateral peace treaty if the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) launched a ground offensive in Rafah, which is located on the Egypt-Gaza border. The position of the Egyptian authorities was not expressed publicly, but is quite legitimate since the invasion would be a direct violation of the terms of the Camp David Accords.
Peace with Israel
Egypt was the first Arab nation to normalize relations with Israel, having previously been a fierce enemy of the Jewish state. In September 1967, a few years before the Camp David Accords, Egypt was one of the eight countries that signed the so-called Khartoum Resolution, famous for the “Three Noes” (“No peace with Israel, no recognition of Israel, no negotiations with Israel”).
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These slogans were largely influenced by the Arab League Summit in Khartoum, which convened shortly after the end of the Six-Day War (June 5-10, 1967), in the course of which Israel swiftly defeated the military coalition formed by Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Iraq, and Algeria. The consequences were quite severe for the Arabs: Israel captured the Sinai Peninsula and the Gaza Strip from Egypt, the West Bank of the Jordan River (including East Jerusalem) from Jordan, and the Golan Heights from Syria.