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CAIRO: The Palestinian embassy in Egypt is seeking temporary residence permits for tens of thousands of people who arrived from Gaza during the war between Israel and Hamas, which it says would ease conditions for them until the conflict ends.
Diab Al-Louh, the Palestinian ambassador in Cairo, said up to 100,000 Gazans had crossed into Egypt, where they lack the documents to enroll their children in schools, open businesses or bank accounts, travel or access health insurance. , although some have found ways to make a living.
Louh stressed that the residence permits would only be for legal and humanitarian purposes, adding that those who arrived since the war began on October 7 had no plans to settle in Egypt.
“We are talking about a category (of people) in an exceptional situation. We ask the state to grant them temporary residences that can be renewed until the crisis in Gaza ends,” Louh told Reuters in an interview.
“We trust that our Egyptian brothers will understand. They have already contributed a lot,” he stated. “But… this is a question of sovereignty that is being discussed at the highest level.”
Egypt’s State Information Service did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Egypt has openly expressed its opposition to any mass displacement of Palestinians from Gaza, framing it as part of a broader Arab rejection of any repeat of the “Nakba” or “catastrophe,” when some 700,000 Palestinians fled or were forced to abandon their homes in the war that surrounded the creation of Israel in 1948. Palestinian leaders also reject the settlement of their people in foreign countries.
During the current war, the Rafah crossing on the 13-kilometer (8-mile) border between Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula and Gaza has been an entry point for aid deliveries and has also remained largely open to passenger traffic. .
But departures from Gaza, already strictly controlled before the war, have been limited to medical evacuees, foreigners and dual nationals, and Palestinians who pay fees to a company called Hala, owned by a prominent Sinai businessman.

“Things are difficult”
Those who leave also need security clearance from Israel and Egypt, which together have maintained a blockade on the enclave since Hamas seized power there in 2007.
“We’re talking about 100,000 who are looking forward to the day they can return to Gaza… maybe once a truce is reached or the war ends,” said Louh, a Palestinian Authority official who is also from Gaza.
“But until this happens, people need to correct their legal status.”
The embassy had already helped facilitate the passage of some families back to Gaza during the war, Louh said. Some Palestinians, including visitors and students enrolled at Egyptian universities, were stranded in Egypt when the war began.
Tens of thousands of Palestinians are believed to have settled after 1948 in Egypt, although numbers were lower than in Jordan, Lebanon and Syria, where the United Nations established refugee camps. When rules granting Palestinians the same rights as Egyptians were rescinded around the time of Egypt’s 1978 peace deal with Israel, Palestinians say they experienced increasing difficulties obtaining documents.
The embassy’s efforts to help Gazans in Egypt have been complicated by a lack of funding and staff. The Palestinian Authority, which has limited autonomy in the occupied West Bank, has been hit by falling funding from international donors and Israel’s withholding of tax revenue it collects on behalf of the Palestinians.
“Things are difficult, dangerous and could become more dangerous,” Louh said, referring to the possibility of a major Israeli incursion into Rafah, where more than a million Gazans have sought refuge near the Egyptian border.