US Secretary of State Antony Blinken expressed his gratitude to Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi for Egypt’s tremendous work in facilitating a mechanism for American citizens and other foreign nationals to exit Gaza.
The Egyptian Foreign Ministry said in a statement on Thursday that Egypt would help evacuate about 7,000 foreign nationals from the neighboring Gaza Strip, which has been under intense Israeli bombardment and blockade since October 7.
“We are firmly focused on a two-state solution and reject the forced relocation of Palestinians outside of the Gaza Strip,” Blinken tweeted.
For the first time since the beginning of the recent Israeli siege on Gaza, the Rafah crossing, the only border crossing between Egypt and the Palestinian enclave, received on Wednesday hundreds of foreign passport holders and tens of wounded Palestinians from Gaza to be treated at Egyptian hospitals.
Egypt has been criticizing Israel’s attempts to push over a million Gazans to relocate southward and has previously reiterated its rejection of the influx of Palestinian refugees into the country’s Sinai Peninsula through the Rafah border crossing.
