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The collapse of Egypt's border with the Gaza Strip on Wednesday altered the region's political and security landscape as suddenly as it changed the fortunes of Palestinians who poured out of the enclave to stock up on goods made scarce by an Israeli blockade.
After masked gunmen used land mines to blast through a 7-mile-long border wall, tens of thousands of jubilant Gazans went on an Egyptian spree, buying gasoline, heating oil, rice, sugar, milk, cheese, cigarettes, tires, cement, television sets and cellphones.
The neglect and mistreatment of the 1.5 million Palestinians trapped in the Gaza Strip is a disgrace, and a very dangerous one. They are pawns in the struggle among Hamas, which controls Gaza and uses the territory to bombard Israel daily; its rivals in the Fatah movement that run the Palestinian Authority and the West Bank; and Israel. If something isn’t done quickly to address the Gazans’ plight, President Bush’s Annapolis peace process could implode.
THE HAMAS movement provided a dramatic illustration yesterday of its ability to disrupt any movement toward peace between Israelis and Palestinians. As tens of thousands of residents of the Gaza Strip surged across the border into Egypt, Hamas security forces directed traffic; earlier, they stood by as organized groups of militants blew up the fence along the previously sealed border.
Israel wants to cut its links with the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip after militants blasted open the territory's border with Egypt in defiance of an Israeli blockade, Israel's deputy defense minister said on Thursday.
Israel, which occupied the Gaza Strip in 1967, pulled troops and settlers out in 2005 but still controls its northern and eastern borders, airspace and coastal waters, and has imposed a blockade it says is meant to counter militant rocket fire.
This month, President Bush visited the Israeli-occupied West Bank towns of Bethlehem and Ramallah and declared that the occupation must end. These were no doubt welcome words to Palestinians and Israelis alike. They provide hope for peace; for without occupation, peace is truly possible.
Unfortunately, for many, including my 10-year-old daughter Abir, it is too late.
One year ago, Abir was shot in the head by Israeli border police as she left school. The soldiers allege that they were fighting with children who were throwing rocks.
If you bottle up 1.5 million people in a territory 25 miles long and six miles wide, and turn off the lights, as Israel has done in Gaza, the bottle will burst. This is what happened yesterday when tens of thousands of Gazans poured into Egypt to buy food, fuel and supplies after militants destroyed two-thirds of the wall separating the Gaza Strip from Egypt. It was the biggest jail break in history.
As tens of thousands of Palestinians clambered back and forth between the Gaza strip and Egypt today, details emerged of the audacious operation that brought down a hated border wall and handed the Islamist group Hamas what might be its greatest propaganda coup.
Hamas, which took control of the coastal territory last June after a stand-off with Fatah, has denied that its men set off the explosions that brought down as much as two-thirds of the 12-km wall in the early hours.
Washington's refusal to endorse a draft United Nations Security Council statement condemning Israel's siege of Gaza effectively advocated the collective punishment of 1.4 million Palestinian men, women and children. The US ambassador to the United Nations said that the initial draft statement produced by Libya was "unacceptable" because it did not mention Palestinian rocket attacks on Israel.
Before it is dark and when there is no communication with the world," wrote Dr Eyad Sarraj, the prominent human rights advocate, from Gaza last Tuesday night, "I want to tell you that current Israeli policy of squeezing on has the aim of pushing Egypt to open its borders with Gaza and bring the situation to prior 1967."
He went on: "Israel will then close its borders with Gaza, separate the (Gaza) Strip from the West Bank and destroy the peace proposals of one or two states. In short Israel is fulfilling the (Ariel) Sharon unilateral withdrawal strategy.
A few Israel Defense Forces Engineering Corps officers surely shed a tear yesterday while viewing the television reports from Rafah: The barrier built by the IDF with blood and sweat along the Philadelphi Route, on the Gaza Strip border with Egypt, was coming down.
The closure imposed a year ago on the Gaza Strip by Israel and Egypt was effectively lifted yesterday after hundreds of thousands of Gazans overran the Egyptian border. According to United Nations reports, about 20 percent of Gaza's population crossed into the Egyptian side of Rafah on foot and in cars after explosives were used to destroy about two-thirds of the border barrier overnight Tuesday.
Almost exactly five years after it reached its zenith with the invasion of Iraq, the influence of neo-conservatives has waned sharply in Washington, as their nemeses, the "realists" in the national security bureaucracy, have increasingly asserted control over U.S. foreign policy.
UNDER the pressure of Israeli sanctions, Gaza this week blew a gasket. On January 23rd Palestinian militants blasted holes in the metal wall along the sealed Gaza-Egypt border. A bulldozer broadened the gaps. Tens or even hundreds of thousands of Palestinians poured through to buy fuel, food, spare parts and other supplies. Egypt's president, Hosni Mubarak, was annoyed but ordered his troops to let them in, saying they were “starving due to an Israeli siege”.
Israel’s current siege of Gaza must be inflicting the Palestinian President, Abu Mazen, with a sharp pain to the temples. This ache, which has been intermittent since June 2007, is undoubtedly caused this time by the confusion over how to act in response to the newest demonstration of Israeli aggression. The 1.5 million people of Gaza, the president’s people, are caught up as innocent victims in a fray between Palestinian rockets from the coastal strip and Israeli air strikes.
The tens of thousands of Palestinians who burst out of Gaza into Egypt this week in search of food, fuel and medicine have temporarily broken the siege that had tightened like a noose around this teeming territory ever since Hamas took over the Gaza Strip last June.
Like the lid coming off a pressure cooker, the blown-up border fence has avoided a bigger explosion – for now. But Gaza’s humanitarian disaster and conflict shows every sign it could escalate into war if it is not brought under control.
Links:
[1] http://www.americantaskforce.org/print/5876
[2] http://www.americantaskforce.org/printmail/5876
[3] http://www.americantaskforce.org/printpdf/5876
[4] http://www.americantaskforce.org/rss/wpr
[5] http://www.americantaskforce.org/world_press_roundup/20080124t000000
[6] http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-gaza24jan24,0,4107202.story
[7] http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/24/opinion/24thu1.html?_r=1&oref=slogin&ref=opinion&pagewanted=print
[8] http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/23/AR2008012303327.html
[9] http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/24/AR2008012400252_pf.html
[10] http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/oped/bal-op.combatants24jan24,0,5445601.story
[11] http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,,2245701,00.html
[12] http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/middle_east/article3238615.ece
[13] http://dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=1&article_id=88312&categ_id=17
[14] http://gulfnews.com/opinion/columns/region/10184234.html
[15] http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/947829.html
[16] http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/947633.html
[17] http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=40917
[18] http://www.economist.com/world/africa/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10567010
[19] http://miftah.org/Display.cfm?DocId=16012&CategoryId=13
[20] http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/559caf6e-cab5-11dc-a960-000077b07658.html
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