Will Egypt sell out Palestinians for $10b loan package?
By Mike Whitney
Political, economic analyst
On Saturday, western news agencies reported that closed-door negotiations took place in Paris that were aimed at reaching an agreement on a cease-fire in Gaza. According to Reuters, the talks represented “the most serious push for weeks” to halt the fighting in the battered Palestinian enclave and see Israeli and foreign captives released.
Regrettably, the reports from Paris were largely a media-engineered deception intended to divert attention from the real purpose of the confab. Keep in mind that the primary attendees of the gathering were not senior-level diplomats or trained negotiators, but the directors of the Intelligence services including the head of Israel’s Mossad, David Barnea, Egyptian spy chief Abbas Kamel, and CIA Director William Burns. These are not the men one would choose to hammer out a captive exchange or a cease-fire deal, but to implement electronic surveillance, espionage, or black ops.
Thus, it is extremely unlikely that they met in Paris to settle on a plan for the cessation of hostilities. The more probable explanation is that the respective spy chiefs are putting the finishing touches on a collaborative plan to breach the Egyptian border wall so that one and a half million severely traumatized Palestinians can flee into Egypt without any serious opposition from the Egyptian army.
Such an operation would require considerable coordination in order to minimize the casualties while, at the same time, achieving its overall objective. Naturally, any breach would have to be blamed on Hamas who will undoubtedly be the convenient scapegoat for blowing up a section of the wall creating an opening for thousands of stampeding Palestinians. In this way, Israel could characterize the mass expulsion as a “voluntary migration,” which is the cheery-sounding Zionist sobriquet for ethnic cleansing. In any event, the bulk of Gaza’s Muslim population will have been evicted from their historic homeland and forced into refugee camps scattered across the Sinai Desert. This is Netanyahu’s endgame, which could take place at any time.
There is some doubt as to whether Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi will cooperate with Israel and allow the Palestinians to enter Egypt en masse, but those doubts are based on speculation, not fact. For those who care to dig a bit deeper, there’s a clear money trail connecting the dodgy Egyptian president to a policy change that will more than accommodate Netanyahu’s ambitious ethnic cleansing plan. In other words, the fix is already in. This is from Reuters:
“Talks with Egypt to boost its International Monetary Fund loan program are making excellent progress,” the IMF said on Thursday, adding that Egypt needs a “very comprehensive support package” to deal with economic challenges, including pressures from the war in Gaza.
Asked about the impact on the talks from challenges posed by the expected entry of Gaza refugees into Egypt, Kozack said: “There is a need to have a very comprehensive support package for Egypt, and we’re working very closely with both the Egyptian authorities and their partners to ensure that Egypt does not have any residual financing needs and also to ensure that the program is able to ensure macroeconomic and financial stability in Egypt.”
Repeat: “to ensure that Egypt does not have any residual financing needs”? What in the world? So, the IMF now provides financial support for ethnic cleansing?
It certainly looks that way. The IMF wants to make sure that el-Sisi has sufficient money to cover the costs of feeding and housing one and a half million refugees. But is that where those billions of dollars will actually go; to the starving Palestinians who have lost their homes and all their material possessions, or will it vanish into the offshore accounts of corrupt Egyptian politicians just as it has in Ukraine? We’ve all seen this movie many times before, and it doesn’t end well.
According to the Financial Times, Kristalina Georgieva, managing director of the International Monetary Fund, “made clear that the war in Gaza was the main reason why the IMF was pushing ahead with an expanded loan deal, despite having stopped disbursements on an earlier $3b loan.”
“Analysts say the Egypt-IMF discussions have focused on a package of at least $10b, some of which would come from the lender and the rest from other donors, likely to include the World Bank.
Let me get this straight: The IMF halted payouts on a $3 billion loan to Egypt, but now they are prepared to hand over $10 billion to a debt-ridden, credit-risk nation whose currency suffered a 40% devaluation last year and whose economy is presently in the dumps? Does that make sense? Of course, not.
The Cradle also wrote, “The International Monetary Fund (IMF) says there is ‘excellent progress’ in talks with Egypt over a loan program that seeks to ‘support’ the country in weathering its financial woes and handling a potential deluge of Palestinian refugees that Israel seeks to ethnically cleanse from Gaza.”
So, someone finally has the courage to say what everyone knows to be true already, that the IMF is financing the ethnic cleansing of Gaza. Here’s more from the same article:
“IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva said in November that the agency was ‘seriously considering’ a possible augmentation of Egypt’s loan program due to ‘economic difficulties posed by the Israel-Gaza war’.”
“The loan could reach up to $10 billion to help the Egyptian economy survive amid local and external factors, including the Israeli onslaught on the neighboring Gaza Strip and tensions in the Red Sea.”
The article continued, “This coincided with the start of construction work on an ‘isolated security zone’ in the eastern Sinai Desert on the border with the Gaza Strip, which many expect will serve as a buffer zone for displaced Palestinians.”
“The construction work seen in Sinai along the border with Gaza — the establishment of a reinforced security perimeter around a specific, open area of land — are serious signs that Egypt may be preparing to accept and allow the displacement of Gazans to Sinai, in coordination with Israel and the United States.”
It’s worth noting, that by accepting the IMF loan of $10 billion, el-Sisi has agreed to peg Egypt’s currency to black market rates, which means its value will be cut in half on the day the deal is consummated. Egyptian working people — half of whom already live below the poverty line — will be severely hurt by the bailout, although not nearly as much as the Palestinians who will be left to rot in tent cities in the desert.
Also, it appears that the IMF will continue to dangle the $10 billion loan (bribe?) beneath el-Sisi’s nose until the Palestinians finally cross over into Egypt and the operation is concluded. This is how Western oligarchs use international institutions like the IMF to coerce their puppets to do what they want. In this case, they needed a pliable Judas who would be willing to double-cross his fellow Muslims in order to line his pockets and those of his closest allies. They apparently found their man in el-Sisi.
This may also help to explain why Egypt is currently clearing a vast tract of land just a stone’s throw from the Gaza border. Cairo is preparing the land to accommodate the burgeoning flow of refugees who will soon be pouring into the country. This is from Forbes:
“Egypt is setting up a camp near its border with Gaza as a contingency for a potential exodus of Palestinians from the enclave if Israel goes ahead with a ground offensive on Rafah, the border region where more than half of Gaza’s population is taking refuge, Reuters reported.”
“Citing four unnamed sources, Reuters reported Egypt is preparing a ‘desert area with some basic facilities’ to shelter potential refugees as a ‘temporary and precautionary measure’.”
“The human rights group, the Sinai Foundation, has shared images of the purported camps, showing trucks and cranes in the area setting up a ‘high-security area’ surrounded by concrete fences.”
Finally, the report said, “The New York Times corroborated the images and spoke to contractors at the site who said they had been hired to build a 16-foot-high concrete wall around a five-square-kilometer patch of land near the border.”
The full article first appeared on Eurasia Review.