A snap shot of Egypt’s foreign minister Badr Abdelatty with CNN’s Becky Anderson during the interview.
The foreign minister's statements came in an exclusive interview with CNN’s Becky Anderson on board a plane on the way to an international press conference on the Egyptian side of the Rafah crossing on Monday.
When Anderson asked about Abdelatty’s response to critics who say Egyptians “are, simply, one, not doing enough, and further, that they are complicit in the blocking of aid,” he said: “What's being portrayed by some circles is a big lie."
“You have two terminals, one on the Egyptian side, which is open, and the Palestinian terminal. The Israelis destroyed the Palestinian terminal four times, and we tried to rehabilitate. The Israelis now, physically, they are on the Palestinian terminal of the Rafah crossing, and they are blocking it,” he explained.
“They are not allowing any single truck or person to move in, because Israel is the main country which is blocking and putting restrictions on the flow of humanitarian aid.”
Anderson, the anchor of CNN International's flagship news and current affairs primetime news program Connect the World, asked the Egyptian top diplomat about the point of having a peace agreement, which, she said, “can't be negotiated.”
In response, FM Abdelatty said, “Well, of course, the point of having a peace treaty with Israel is… that this is the main pillar of stability in our neighbourhoods. We have contacts with them on the security level, on the intelligence level, and we are working very hard with them."
“The problem is, you know, sometimes, as they are saying, on the political level, the lack of political will to work out a deal. This is the main impediment.”
About displacement plans, he said, “Displacement is a red line. We will not accept it, we will not participate in it, and we will not allow it to happen because displacement, first of all, there is no moral, ethical, legal, or political reason for that.”
“Those people are attached to their homeland. Why should we distract them from their homeland? This is one issue. Second issue, the displacement is a one-way ticket. I can assure you, those who will leave Gaza will never be allowed to go back to Gaza.”
“And that means to have one objective, the liquidation of the Palestinian cause. That will be the end of the Palestinian cause.”
Anderson said when she asked the Egyptian foreign minister whether he was optimistic about the current round of talks, he told her that “he'd given up using the term optimistic.”
Later, on the Egyptian side of the Rafah crossing, during a joint press conference with Palestinian prime minister Mohamed Mustafa, Abdelatty reiterated Cairo’s rejection of “Greater Israel” illusions and any attempt to displace Palestinians, a position Mustafa praised as “an impregnable barrier” to Israeli plans.
On Sunday, Cairo urged other states not to become complicit in any ethnic cleansing efforts as they constituted a war crime under international law.
Since 27 July, Egypt has dispatched 17 aid convoys, in collaboration with the UN and its humanitarian partners, to stem famine conditions in Gaza amid a five-month-old Israeli blockade on the strip.
However, Israel has prevented the entry of hundreds of aid truck into Gaza by imposing endless inspections of content and arrestining truck drivers.
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