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June 4th, 2026 | 11:46 AM
The Refugee Platform in Egypt’s statement on the neglect and exploitation of Egyptian citizens stranded in the Gaza Strip in crisis, and the Egyptian authorities’ failure to ensure their safe return
After nearly three years of ongoing genocide, siege, and destruction in the Gaza Strip, dozens of Egyptian citizens remain stranded inside Gaza while facing bombardment, hunger, forced displacement, and the collapse of health and humanitarian services amid continued formal silence from the Egyptian state and a clear failure to ensure their safe return home.
Although most evacuations carried out during the ethnic cleansing spree for foreigners, dual nationals, international workers, journalists, and staff of international organizations took place via Egyptian territory and through the Rafah crossing, the Egyptian government has failed to secure the exit of its own citizens intending to leave the Strip, leaving them to face the genocide, exploitation, extortion. Meanwhile, ‘security coordination’ companies transformed during the ethnic cleansing campaign into a parallel market for crossing and exit.
In December 2023, the Egyptian Foreign Affairs Ministry announced the establishment of an electronic platform for registering Egyptian citizens who intend to return from the Gaza Strip, asserting that the platform was the only official channel available to ensure their return. Nevertheless, the following three years proved that this platform did not provide tangible protection or a clear path to rescue stranded Egyptian citizens, who continued to issue repeated appeals and cries for help without an effective or transparent response.
In April 2025, an investigation published by the website ‘Third Perspective’, or Zawia 3, revealed that at least 229 people were stranded inside the Gaza Strip, including 213 forcibly displaced Egyptian citizens holding national ID cards and Egyptian passports, alongside their spouses and children who number 16 in total. The investigation documented testimonies from Egyptian families living in catastrophic humanitarian conditions amid ongoing bombardment and forced displacement, with no effective intervention from Egyptian authorities to end their suffering.
Recent months have also seen protests and public appeals from forcibly displaced Egyptian citizens stranded inside Gaza, demanding that the Egyptian government intervene to evacuate them. They assert that they have been living for three years under dire conditions, and that many of them entered Gaza before the genocide began to visit their families or for other personal reasons, only to find themselves trapped in an annihilation zone.
The continued presence of forcibly displaced Egyptian citizens inside the Gaza Strip throughout this period, despite the Egyptian state’s ability to play a pivotal role in transit and evacuation operations, raises serious questions about the reasons for this inaction. Furthermore, the Egyptian state’s lack of complete, formal transparency regarding the statistics of those stranded, the measures taken to evacuate these forcibly displaced people, and the criteria used to allow others to leave while abandoning these forcibly displaced people to an unknown and horrid outcome under the weight of ethnic cleansing and humanitarian crisis provokes grave concerns.
Moreover, this inaction exposes vulnerable, forcibly displaced Egyptian citizens to financial exploitation, and to networks of ‘security coordination’ profiteers. These exposures and risks illustrate additional failures on the state’s part to fulfill its fundamental duty to protect its citizens; ensure their safe and dignified return; as well as protect them from the extortion and exploitation attempts that have proliferated during the Palestinian genocide.
Protecting Egyptian citizens abroad is not a political matter or a propaganda-based issue, but a legal, constitutional, and moral obligation borne by the Egyptian state and its diplomatic and consular services.
It is unacceptable for this official silence to continue while forcibly displaced Egyptian citizens face daily threats of murder inside the Gaza Strip.
As a result, RPEGY calls on the Egyptian authorities to:
- Immediately and transparently disclose the number of forcibly displaced Egyptians citizens stranded in the Gaza Strip.
- Publish a straightforward and urgent plan to evacuate these forcibly displaced people and ensure their return.
- Open direct and effective channels of communication with those stranded and their families.
- Investigate reports of financial exploitation and extortion of stranded forcibly displaced Egyptian citizens through ‘security coordination’ networks and companies.
- Ensure that no Egyptian citizen remains forcibly displaced in an area destabilized by targeted military aggression and ethnic cleansing, without protection or an effective formal response issued.
The continuous disregard of the suffering of forcibly displaced Egyptian citizens stranded in Gaza is unjustifiable and reflects a severe failure to protect civilians and guarantee their most basic human and civil right: to return to their homeland.
