Hamas tried to sneak its fighters out of the Gaza Strip in ambulances that evacuated dozens of wounded Palestinians to Egypt earlier this week, a senior Biden administration official said Friday.

Hamas had compiled a list of the seriously wounded that it wanted to evacuate from Gaza for treatment in Egypt, along with thousands of foreign nationals looking to flee the enclave.

The list was then vetted by Egypt and the United States, which found that a third of the names on it were of Hamas fighters, the administration official said, adding that the list was rejected and none of the 76 wounded Palestinians who were ultimately evacuated in ambulances out of Gaza were members of the terror group.

  • redcalcium@lemmy.institute
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    1 year ago

    Why not allow them to pass and then arrest them at the border? Surely better than bombing random buildings that may or may not have Hamas fighters inside.

    • PhlubbaDubba@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      Doing that would prompt Hamas to stop cooperating with allowing civilians to seek medical assistance outside of Gaza.

      Literally every humanitarian thing Hamas permits it does so with the intention of funneling benefits to its own fighters and members.

      It’s the same problem as African warlords intercepting and sitting on medical aid intended for impoverished villagers.

      A system which perfectly excluded Hamas cronies and fighters from receiving the benefits is one which Hamas will begin targeting for attack because they would rather Palestinians die than be able to get aid through means outside of Hamas’ approval and exploitation

    • assassin_aragorn@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Egypt doesn’t want to deal with that. That’s actually why what were reticent at first to help and why neighboring Arab countries won’t take refugees. Radical militants have snuck in with Palestinian refugees before and caused civil wars. They even killed the King of Jordan in what was eventually called Black September.

    • LaLiLuLuCo@sh.itjust.works
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      1 year ago

      Also allowing a war crime (using ambulances to transport fighters and/or arms) and defending it like this emboldens them to continue doing it to the detriment of civilians since they won’t face consequences.

    • LaLiLuLuCo@sh.itjust.works
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      1 year ago

      Reposting.

      Israel doesn’t operate the Egypt side and Egypt wants to not be an active participant beyond maintaining the crossing. They especially don’t want to run a PoW camp.

      Working with the IDF directly to transfer prisoners to them would probably start shit in Egypt Sisi doesn’t want to start as it would be seen as entering the war I guess. Iran backed Houthi rebels in Yemen are already doing War Crimes on Egyptian hospitals for their current stance.