Satellite images published Friday confirm construction is underway on what appears to be a large security enclosure in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula adjacent to Gaza, prompting suspicions that Egypt is preparing to receive an influx of Palestinian refugees from the Gaza Strip.
The images, published by The Associated Press and The New York Times, lend credence to a report this week from the Sinai Foundation for Human Rights, which quoted local contractors saying they had been hired to build a large, enclosed area with 7-meter-high (23-feet-high) walls.
The Egyptian government has not commented publicly on the reports.
The satellite images show a large stretch of graded land and construction on what appears to be a high concrete wall. Reports on the size of the planned enclosure range from 5 square kilometers (3.11 square miles) to 20 square kilometers (12.4 square miles).
A contractor and an engineer, who spoke and provided photos of the work to The New York Times, said they had begun work on February 5 and started on the wall two days ago.
The Sinai Foundation, an independent nongovernmental organization monitoring and documenting human rights conditions in the Sinai Peninsula, said in its report Monday that the work was undertaken by local companies and subcontracted by the Sons of Sinai construction company owned by businessman Ibrahim Al-Arajani.
It said the work “is intended to create a high-security gated and isolated area near the borders with the Gaza Strip, in preparation for the reception of Palestinian refugees in the case of (a) mass exodus.”
The foundation quoted Muhannad Sabry, a researcher on Sinai affairs and security in Egypt, saying the work provides “serious signs that Egypt may be preparing to accept and allow the displacement of the population of Gaza to Sinai, in coordination with Israel and the United States.”
The AP said that satellite images, taken Thursday by Maxar Technologies, show cranes, trucks and what appear to be precast concrete barriers being set up along a road some 3.5 kilometers (2.2 miles) west of the border with Gaza.
The news agency cited a Wall Street Journal report that quoted unnamed Egyptian officials describing “an 8-square-mile (13-square-kilometer) walled enclosure” being built in the area that could accommodate over 100,000 people.
The AP said the Egyptian government did not respond to its requests for comment Friday, and there has been no public acknowledgment of the work by the government.
Cairo has insisted since the beginning of Israel’s military offensive in the Gaza Strip that it would not allow Palestinian civilians threatened by the war to seek refuge in Egypt, citing security concerns. The area has seen several kidnappings and terrorist incidents in recent years.
Analysts also suspect that Egypt is motivated by fears that if the Palestinians were allowed across the border, Israel would not let them back into Gaza once the war ends.
Such fears are not without foundation. Israel’s Misgav Institute for National Security and Zionist Strategy issued a paper early in the war saying the conflict presented a “unique and rare opportunity to evacuate the whole Gaza Strip.”
Hard-line officials within Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government have also raised that possibility, according to the AP, although Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant was quoted by the agency Friday as saying his government has no such plan.
“The state of Israel has no intention of evacuating Palestinian civilians to Egypt,” Gallant told reporters. “We respect and value our peace agreement with Egypt, which is a cornerstone of stability in the region as well as an important partner.”
Nevertheless, concern is rising over the fate of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who have been pushed by the war into a small area on the Gaza side of the Rafah gate into Egypt. Israel has warned that offensive operations in the Rafah area could begin soon.
Even if Israel does not try to force the Palestinians into Egypt, experts have warned of the possibility that mobs could storm the border crossing to escape the fighting, which began with a deadly Hamas terror attack into Israel on October 7.
"Undoubtedly [Egyptian President Abdel Fatah al-Sissi] is worried that Israel will bomb the wall at Rafah, causing a flood of hungry and terrified Palestinians to sweep into Egypt,” said Joshua Landis, head of the Center for Middle East Studies at the University of Oklahoma
Noting that Egypt is already struggling to feed its 100 million citizens, Landis told VOA that “by building an extra containment wall, Egypt is announcing to the world and Israel that it will not become the solution to Israel's Palestinians problem."
Palestinian fears of being pushed into the Sinai desert were posted on social media platform X, formerly Twitter, Thursday by Gaza-based journalist, Bisan Owda.
“We will die in the desert because of hunger. If they displace us to north of Egypt to Sinai desert, we will just die. We will die,” she said in an audio recording.
