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Gaza into Sinai: The Displacement Plan and Egypt's Refusal

The Gaza Strip is a narrow piece of land, about 25 miles long, squeezed between Israel, the Mediterranean, and Egypt's Sinai Peninsula. More than two million Palestinians live there. Since October 2023 Israeli officials have repeatedly raised the idea of moving them out, and the place they have pointed to is Sinai. For the people of Gaza that would mean exile. For Egypt it would mean a refugee population on its soil, a war front moved into its territory, and land on Israel's border emptied for Israel. This page lays out the evidence that the plan exists and how Egypt has fought it.

The Intelligence Ministry paper (October 2023)​

Days after the 7 October 2023 attack, Israel's Ministry of Intelligence prepared an advisory document on Gaza's civilians. WikiLeaks, which published the Hebrew text, described it this way: the "Verified document from Israeli Ministry of Intelligence in October 2023 suggests forced displacement of Gaza civilians to Egypt would 'yield positive and long term strategic results.' The advisory document envisions a three stage process including the establishment of tent cities in Sinai and opening of humanitarian corridor, followed by construction of cities in northern Sinai from which there would be no return" (WikiLeaks on X, 2 July 2024). Canadian broadcaster CTV reported it as an "Israeli ministry concept paper [that] proposes transferring Gaza civilians to Egypt's Sinai" (linked by Kit Klarenberg).

When the document surfaced, the answers from Israel changed day by day. The day before, Israel's ambassador to Russia had said, "There are no plans to resettle." Then Netanyahu's office called the paper a "hypothetical scenario" (Sprinter Press on X, 1 November 2023). A hypothetical scenario written by a government ministry in wartime is a plan on the shelf.

Pressure on Egypt, and on Washington​

According to the Times of Israel stories collected by the journalist Kit Klarenberg, Netanyahu "sought US pressure on Egypt to absorb Gaza refugees, was rebuffed," and former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak said Netanyahu had long ago proposed settling Palestinians in Sinai. Klarenberg's summary: "successive Israeli governments have demanded Egypt allow the IOF to drive Gaza's population into the Sinai. Netanyahu is particularly taken with the prospect" (Kit Klarenberg, 30 January 2025). Activist Post, republishing the same investigation, added: "In the wake of October 7, 2023, the official Israeli government and Zionist think tank policy papers have openly advocated driving Palestinians into the neighboring desert. It has been reported that Israeli officials requested the U.S. to pressure Cairo into allowing this mass displacement" (Activist Post, 30 January 2025).

The same idea reached the White House. In February 2025 President Trump, standing beside Netanyahu, said of Gaza: "The United States will take control of the Gaza Strip, and we will deal with it. We will own it" (as quoted by a post on X, 6 February 2025). Netanyahu described the idea to i24 in August 2025 as "allowing them to leave": "Why should Gaza be closed? We are not pushing them out, but we are allowing them to leave" (HOT SPOT on X, 12 August 2025).

What Egypt's army believes​

Egypt's generals read the plan the same way. Kenneth Roth, former head of Human Rights Watch, quoted The Economist in October 2023: "Within Egypt's powerful army, there is a long-held belief that Israel sees Sinai as the solution for its Gaza problem: that it seeks to expel the territory's population into Egypt." The fear, it said, is that "temporary refugees will become permanent ones" (Kenneth Roth on X, 14 October 2023).

Egypt's refusal​

  • Egypt has refused throughout to open Sinai to a mass transfer.
  • It moved troops into northern Sinai "to stave off potential Israeli ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in Gaza," as the Jordanian journalist Daoud Kuttab described it (The New Arab, 26 August 2025).
  • Israel, in turn, "officially demanded an explanation from Egypt for its military activities in the Sinai," and its former ambassador to Egypt questioned "Egypt's genuine recognition of Israel within its 1948 borders" (Internationalist 360 / The Cradle, 10 January 2025).
  • In its statement of 13 August 2025, Egypt's Foreign Ministry tied its rejection of Greater Israel to "ending the war on Gaza, and establishing a Palestinian state along the June 4, 1967 borders" (Yaffa News Network, 14 August 2025).

How this connects to Greater Israel​

Emptying Gaza into Sinai does two things at once. It clears Gaza for Israel, which Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich has said should see "expansion... that will extend our borders" (video, 9 April 2026). And it puts Israel's problem on Egyptian land, making Sinai a zone of Israeli concern again. The same approach is feared for the West Bank and Jordan (see The alternative homeland). A Reddit user in Jordan named the pattern in 2024: "the ethnic cleansing of west Bank to Jordan and gaza to Egypt. It's a serious idea they keep talk about."

Evidence rating: CONFIRMED that Israel's Intelligence Ministry wrote a plan to move Gaza's population into Sinai. STRONG that Israeli leaders sought to carry it out through pressure on Egypt and the United States.

Status: Benjamin Netanyahu, Bezalel Smotrich, Donald Trump, David Govrin, Kenneth Roth, Daoud Kuttab, and Kit Klarenberg are alive. Hosni Mubarak is deceased (2020). Nothing on this page states that any living person committed a crime.

Sources​

Research captures: twitter/t26__v301.md, twitter/t26__v304.md, twitter/t26__v305.md, twitter/t26__v308.md, twitter/t26__v310.md, twitter/t25__v289.md, twitter/t25__v297.md

Last Updated: 2026-09-26

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