Publisher's Synopsis
"In October 2014, the Egyptian government issued a decree to begin forcible evictions in the town of Rafah on the border with the Gaza Strip, five days after an insurgent group that later joined the Islamic State launched an unprecedented attack on a military position in North Sinai. Egypt justified the evictions as a way to defeat the insurgents by shutting down smuggling tunnels from Gaza, through which, they alleged, the insurgents received weapons and fighters. But a Human Rights Watch investigation based on interviews with evicted families and extensive satellite imagery shows that demolitions on the border began not in October 2014 but in July 2013, after the military removed former President Mohamed Morsy. Since then, the Egyptian military has forcibly evicted about 3,200 families, destroying as many buildings in the process, as well as hundreds of hectares of farmland. Families told Human Rights Watch the army warned them of
