Opinions vary:

Israeli psychologist Samuel Vaknin says Egypt doesn’t like the Palestinians and wants to annex Gaza, preferably without the Palestinians in it.

Kim Iversen says if Egypt accepts them then Israel wins and can take over all of Gaza and the Palestinians will of course never return.

Also possible is that Egypt is afraid they will import Hamas and other smaller terrorist groups. Something like Black September could happen.

Some say Egypt doesn’t have the means to take care of so many refugees.

Also possible is that Egypt is very loyal to the US since it receives a lot of US support, they even have been able to get the Abrams tanks. In 2023 the US approved 235 million in military aid to Egypt. They are likely not willing to anger the US over too much assistance to the Palestinians.

Moshe and I talk a little bit about it in our second talk. Perhaps we will go deeper into this aspect of the conflict in a later discussion.