On October 14, a Georgian-language Facebook user published a video in which we see how a large group of people move with white bags hanging on their backs. The video is accompanied by a description that Egyptians have crossed the border with Gaza on foot to deliver water and food to the people of the Gaza Strip.
An identical video with a similar description was published with the Facebook user “Georgia First.” The video is also actively distributed by Russian-language users (1, 2, 3).
The claim that the circulated video shows Egyptian citizens crossing the border with the Gaza Strip to help Palestinians is false. The video appeared on social networks a few weeks before the start of the Israel-Hamas war. The footage has been searched on the TikTok platform since August 31, 2023, and has no connection to the current events in Gaza.
We traced the video, which seems to have been shot on the Egypt-Gaza border, on various social networks. The oldest of them is a video posted on TikTok, which appeared on the platform on August 31. In the Arabic description of the video, we read “Al-Salum, the western border of Egypt”.
Saloum is a port settlement in the extreme northwest of Egypt, 8 kilometers from the Egyptian-Libyan border.
The same video appeared on X (former Twitter) on September 7. The description mentions that the video was shot on the Libyan-Egyptian border.
The video was fact-checked by the Arab fact-checking portal Misbar as early as September 11 to determine whether the footage showed a convoy of people traveling from Egypt to Libya through illegal migration. Initially, it was with this claim that the video spread on social networks – various users claimed that the people captured in the video were crossing the border from Egypt to Libya in order to work in Libya or to enter Europe illegally. Based on various indicators, Misbar determined that the video was indeed shot in the Egypt-Libya border area.
Is it possible to move freely from Egypt to Gaza?
The border between Egypt and Gaza is about 14 kilometers long. Apart from the two exits to Israel, the Rafah crossing in the extreme south of Gaza is the only one that connects the Gaza Strip to the outside world. According to the 2007 agreement, Egypt fully controls the crossing.
Beyond the Rafah exit, the border strip was surrounded by a solid construction by Egypt. Egypt made the decision to build the first barrier in 2008, and in 2020, the construction of a new structure started parallel to the existing wall. Egypt also maintains a buffer zone with Gaza, which increased to 1.5 kilometers in 2017.
With strict border control by Egypt, entry and exit from the southern border into the Gaza Strip is strictly controlled. Against the backdrop of the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas, the Egyptian authorities have tightened border control, both on the border strip and directly at the Rafah crossing, which is still completely closed.
Source: REUTERS/Ibraheem Abu Mustafa
After the start of the Israel-Hamas war, a number of false claims, as well as photo and video manipulations, were disseminated on social media. For more information, see the “Myth Detector” articles:
- The Video Attributed to the Israel-Hamas War Actually Depicts a Child Surviving an Earthquake in Syria
- The Viral Video Showing Children in a Cage is NOT RELATED to the Israel-Hamas War
- Videofabrication as if the CNN Camera Crew Staged Bombing
- Ukraine’s Alleged Sale of Weapons to Hamas is Without Evidence – Russian Propaganda about the Black Market for Weapons
- What Does the Video of the Attack on the Woman with a Hijab Actually Depict?
- A Fabricated Quote Under the Name of Israeli Defense Minister Circulating in Kremlin Media and Social Networks
- Disinformation as if Hamas Warned Israeli Festival Attendees Before the Attack
- Has Israel Passed a Law to Impose Taxes on Christian Churches?
- The Video Attributed to the Israel-Hamas War Actually Depicts a Child Surviving an Earthquake in Syria
- Can Russian be Heard in the Video of the Hamas Attack that Was Disseminated on Facebook?
- The Video of the Attack Shows People Killed not by the Israeli Army, but by Hamas
About the Sources
Facebook user Mamuka Karchkhadze has spread false information of anti-Western content many times in the past. The disinformation disseminated by the user was included in a number of materials of “Myth Detector” (1,2).
The Facebook account “Georgia First” was created on July 15, 2023, and mainly publishes anti-opposition (1,2,3), anti-Ukrainian (1,2,3) content, as well as posts supporting Irakli Gharibashvili (1,2) The account also often shares and publishes Facebook user Nikusha Shanidze’s posts (1,2,3,4,5). One of the posts related to Shanidze is sponsored. “Myth Detector” has debunked the false information spread by Facebook user Nikusha Shanidze several times in the past (1, 2). In addition, Shanidze was involved in the discrediting campaign against Lazare Grigoriadis.
Facebook user Ludmila Gudzovschi has disseminated disinformation a number of times in the past.
The article has been written in the framework of Facebook’s fact-checking program. You can read more about the restrictions that Facebook may impose based on this article via this link. You can find information about appealing or editing our assessment via this link.
Read detailed instructions for editing the article.
Read detailed appeal instructions.
