Gaza's opening to Egypt
At dawn this morning, Palestine-Israel time, masked gunmen set explosive charges that felled much of the high wall that has separated Israeli-occupied Gaza from Egypt since the conclusion of Israel's peace with Egypt in 1979. That opening burst a massive hole through the situation of tight siege that Israel has maintained on Gaza's 1.5 million people since 2000.
Gaza's people were quick to take advantage. If you look at the sat photo at the bottom of this BBC news report you can see for about one-third of its length, the Gaza-Israel boundary cuts through the edge of the heavily populated city of Rafah. (Built-up zones appear as brown on the image.) People from throughout Gaza crossed into Egypt to buy basic commodities to take back into the Strip. We can only speculate over what other kinds of goods are being carted into the Strip, but they may well include military supplies.
Hamas's "caretaker government" in Gaza, elected in a free and fair territories-wide election in January 2006, reportedly moved quickly to take control of the blasted-apart border, closing all of it except for two gaps, over which it maintained control.
This development raises the intriguing possibility that the elected Hamas leaders may now seek to implement a plan they have long had to re-open Gaza's connection with the world economy through Egypt, rather through Israel, which has sustained a monopoly on all of Gaza's links with the outside world since it brought the Strip under Israeli military occupation in 1967. (I wrote about how Hamas leader Mahmoud Zahhar discussed that plan in a March 2006 interview with me, here and elsewhere.)
These developments will also, quite evidently, affect the political situation inside Egypt, where Hamas's allies from the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood form the main opposition to the .US-backed president Hosni Mubarak. Demonstrators in Egypt have been stepping up their demonstrations calling on Mubarak to lift the siege of Gaza.
Yesterday and today Mubarak hit back with harsh repression, detaining scores of MB activists and beating protesters in Cairo's central Tahrir Square with sticks.
On Tuesday, Hundreds of Palestinian women and children organized a mass, nonviolent confrontation with the Egyptian troops tasked with maintaining the Israeli-coordinated siege at the previous sole crossing-point between Gaza and Egypt, at Rafah. At the behest of the Israelis and Americans, Egypt had been keeping that crossing completely closed in recent weeks.
Also of great note: People I talked with during my just-completed trip to Lebanon and Syria all said that public opinion in the Arab world believes strongly that during President Bush's recent visit to the region he gave a "green light" to Israel to escalate its campaign of military and economic violence against Gaza.
On Tuesday night, the UN Security Council considered the issue of the tight Israeli siege against Gaza. This report from Xinhua makes clear that the "draft presidential statement" prepared by the SC's current president, Libya, dealt only with Israel's collective, economic violence against Gaza's people and not with either Israel's disproportionate use of military violence against targets in Gaza or the use by Hamas and other Gaza-based militant groups of primitive, almost untargeted rocket fire against targets inside Israel.
But even though the draft statement dealt only with the immediate humanitarian crisis in Gaza, and not with either aspect of the military confrontation between the two sides,US representative Zal Khalilzad still said it was "unacceptable."
Twelve Israeli civilians have died because of ordnance launched from Gaza in the past seven years. 360 Palestinian civilians-- along with some 450 accused Palestinian "militants"-- are reported to have died because of Israeli military attacks against Gaza within just the past two years. Khalilzad and far too many other members of the western political elites tend to mention only Israel's casualties from the ongoing military confrontation between the two sides, and fail to mention the far greater number of civilian Palestinian casualties from it.
So last night, the Security Council was unable to come out in support of any statement at all about the Gaza crisis. They are supposed to discuss it again today...
Meantime, I'd love to know whether any negotiations, and of what kind, are underway between Egypt and Hamas?
If the international community cannot stop the Israeli apartheid wall and the destruction of people and their lively hood then humanity is at stake.
When will the infamous " Wall" that was built in the end of the 20th century , by the comatose Sharon and the blessings of Bush crumble ?
Occupation is a fluid term that can be easily manipulated by the powerful and occupying powers. when the occupied is portrayed as violent and the occupier as victim then democracy and justice have to be redefined.
After watching this conflict for the past 6 years and delving into the history of it I am convinced it will not stop until the Palestines are "transfered" by Israel. The pattern repeats over and over...provoke, esculate, take more land for "security" and on it goes.
Talking about the problem has become a industry, nothing changes. At some point someone/group/country has to esculate the pressure in the other direction, against the US political establishment and Israel.
Want to end it?...tell the Saudis to cut off the oil or raise the price until it is so painful the US can't take it. Just shut us down and that will shut Israel's expansion down. Any price paid will be better than having the US despised as a enabler of this.
Although my country has had it's dirty operations abroad from time to time this is the first time to my knowledge that we have ever been party to what looks more and more every day like a genocide waiting to happen. It's unbelievable.
In one nasty sense, this is great for Israel; a non- lethal final solution to the Palestinian "problem". Make life so impossibly hard everyone wants to leave. Let them people go. Somewhere, anywhere else. This is, however, clearly a war crime of grave dimension. I wonder if the America will ever again have the moral courage or reputation to say before the international community that such actions by governments against individuals are intolerable. The squandering of America by Bush is truly epic in magnitude.
Most of them are not leaving for good. Many western news reports are misleading on this. Plus, many people previously blocked from returning to Gaza are able to go in. we won't know the total effect on the demographics for some time.