Egyptian president hopes for cease-fire in Gaza ‘within next few days’: Media

By Ibrahim Al-Khazen

CAIRO (AA) - Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi said on Friday that he hopes for a cease-fire in the Gaza Strip within “the next few days,” warning against an Israeli military operation to invade the city of Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip.

“Egypt is striving with every effort to reach a cease-fire in the Gaza Strip, to save innocent civilians from the scourge of war that has been going on for more than five months,” Sisi said during a ceremony at the Police Academy in Cairo as cited by the state news agency MENA.

Sisi expressed his hopes for a cease-fire in Gaza "within the next few days.”

He also warned of "the danger of invasion of the city of Rafah” in the southern Gaza Strip and “the expansion of the scope of the war."

This is the second time in a week that the Egyptian president has warned publicly of the dangers of Rafah's invasion.

Sisi noted that “more than 60% of the Gaza Strip was destroyed, including government and service buildings and facilities.”

He stressed that rebuilding Gaza "requires huge amounts of money and time."

“We also seek to bring the largest amount of humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip," the president said, warning of "the danger of obstructing the entry of aid into Gaza and using food as a weapon against innocent civilians in the strip."

He pointed to the initiative that Egypt joined to help deliver humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip by air, in cooperation with the UAE, Qatar, the United States, and France, in addition to other countries.

Sisi stressed that the people of the Gaza Strip need thousands of tons of aid on a daily basis to meet their needs.

He stressed Egypt's tireless efforts for a cease-fire in Gaza, to bring in the largest possible amount of humanitarian aid, limit the impact of the famine on Gazans, and allow the Palestinians in the center and south of the Gaza Strip to move back toward the north.

Israel has waged a deadly military offensive on the Gaza Strip since an Oct. 7 cross-border attack led by the Palestinian group Hamas in which nearly 1,200 people were killed.

More than 31,300 Palestinians, mostly women and children, have since been killed in Gaza, and over 73,100 others injured amid mass destruction and shortages of necessities.

Israel has also imposed a crippling blockade on the Palestinian enclave, leaving its population, particularly residents of northern Gaza, on the verge of starvation.

The Israeli war has pushed 85% of Gaza’s population into internal displacement amid a crippling blockade of most food, clean water, and medicine, while 60% of the enclave's infrastructure has been damaged or destroyed, according to the UN.

Israel stands accused of genocide at the International Court of Justice. An interim ruling in January ordered Tel Aviv to stop genocidal acts and take measures to guarantee that humanitarian assistance is provided to civilians in Gaza.

*Writing by Ikram Kouachi in Ankara