Your trusted source

Egypt is using the same tactics used by Israel in the occupied Palestinian territories against Egyptian people in Sinai, a journalist tells Press TV.

Aly el-Kabbany, an author and journalist, said in an interview with Press TV from London on Wednesday that, in enforcing a new buffer zone with the Gaza Strip in Sinai, Egyptian authorities are giving residents less than 24 hours to vacate their homes with no offer of alternate accommodation and or compensation.

“They are now displacing Egyptian citizens from their own houses using exactly the same Israeli tactics of bulldozing their houses, destroying their farms and destroying their livelihood just to protect the security of the Zionist entity,” Kabbany said.

Egypt has decided to extend the depth of its security buffer zone on its border with the Israeli-blockaded Gaza Strip from 500 meters to one kilometer.

According Egyptian state media, the decision was taken “after the discovery of underground tunnels” along the border with Gaza.

Kabbany stated that if Egypt wanted the tunnels to go, opening the Raffah crossing was the solution.

“This regime will never be accepted by the Egyptian people now after using the same dirty Zionist tactics against their own people in Sinai,” he said.

The Egyptian military has stepped up its crackdown on the tunnels into the Israeli-blockaded Gaza Strip since it ousted the country’s first democratically elected President Mohamed Morsi in July last year.