Israel is making some big claims about the Rafah crossing opening for Gazans to leave. It seems they forgot to tell Egypt though... Right, so Israel has announced it’s about to open Rafah “in the coming days,” and Egypt has apparently replied with the diplomatic equivalent of “don’t even start,” and the fact both sides can say completely opposite things with a straight face tells you more about this situation than the announcement itself ever will. Israel says the gate will open exclusively for exit, which is convenient when you’re the one controlling the gate, and Egypt says it hasn’t agreed to a thing, which is also convenient when you’ve spent the past year digging trenches and parking tanks along that same frontier. So you can already see the game. Israel gets the headline, Egypt gets the panic, Gaza gets the uncertainty, and none of it requires a single door hinge at Rafah to actually move. Right, so what Israel has done here is announce that the Rafah crossing will open “in the coming days” to let Gazans exit into Egypt, and they’ve done it with the kind of confidence that usually means the groundwork is already laid, except the one government they claim to be coordinating with has immediately said the opposite, and that contradiction is the whole point of the story. Israel says there will be an exit, Egypt says there will not, and you can already see how easily a border can become a political weapon long before a single person ever walks through it. Israel has said this crossing will open exclusively for people to leave Gaza. Egypt has said it has agreed to nothing, and Egypt has said it because of the fear that sits under every one of its statements on Gaza: the fear of being forced to absorb a displaced population. This is the red line Egypt has repeated for two years, and when you look at how they’ve acted, not just what they’ve said, you see that isn’t rhetorical posturing at all because Egypt has reinforced its side of Rafah with berms, trenches, concrete, and tanks, and you don’t build that unless you believe someone might try to move people across that frontier without your consent.