Monday, January 21, 2008
Who knew? Emanuele Ottolenghi has a concise and effective post up at Contentions: Calling Egypt to Account [I hope Contentions and EO forgive me for the significant quote lift.]
...according to this top-secret map of the Middle East, Gaza shares a border with Egypt too! A call to Egypt to let humanitarian aid through the Egypt-Gaza border would have sufficed.
Hamas has now been waging a war against Israel for two years. As I asked six months ago, why should Israel supply them with anything or keep the border open, given that Israel is not the only country sharing a border with Gaza, though it is the only country bordering Gaza that Gaza’s rulers wish and work to destroy?
Egypt, on the other hand, has been turning a blind eye as weapons flow into Gaza. Clearly then, unless it is Ivorian illegal immigrants, Egypt keeps the border open enough for something to go through. How about UNRWA and UNDP food and drugs supplies, oil and gas, milk and flour, instead of weapons?
Given that the international community is powerless to stop Hamas from waging war against Israel, it should turn to Egypt to take responsibility for the suffering of ordinary Gazans. Israel’s decision to seal its borders is not only reasonable, it’s long overdue.
Quite right. Of course, in spite of any "closures," Israel continues to allow humanitarian aid, oil, and electricity from its own power plants, in, but the general point is on.
Listed below are links to blogs that reference this entry: Gaza Shares a Border with TWO Nations.
TrackBack URL for this entry: http://www.solomonia.com/cgi-bin/mt4/mt-renamedtb.cgi/14014
8 Comments
Leave a comment to: Gaza Shares a Border with TWO Nations
Comment Info and Policy:
1) You must have Javascript enabled in your browser in order to comment (blame the spammers). If you don't know what that is, you're probably fine.
2) HTML is on, so basic html should work. Raw links will be made auto-clickable, too, so even if you don't know html you can just paste in the link and it should work fine. Keep the "http://" in it.
3) Comments are generally unmoderated, which means I don't necessarily agree with the tone and tenor of everything posted. In fact, sometimes people post things they don't really mean just to make other people look bad. The internet is an anonymous place for the most part. That said...
4) I welcome you to post here. I'd love to have your input, agree, disagree or just offer a different data point, really. If I didn't want any participation, I'd turn off comments. Be aware, however, that this blog and the comments section exist for my entertainment. Therefore, I reserve ALL RIGHTS here, including the right to remove any or all comments on nothing more than a whim. Please don't even bother complaining. I'm the one providing the space and the free news and thought buffet. I don't owe anyone anything.
Anyone who posts here will be treated as my guest. That means I'm happy to be polite as a default, but if anyone is rude to the host they'll be unceremoniously shown the door.
It may pay to recall a famous line from the Tom Selleck magnum opus, Mr. Baseball: "Jack-san, you want Yoji's advice about the babes, you come to Yoji with respect."
5) Enjoy your stay!
Huh? The closures at the Rafah crossing are driven by Israel, not by Egypt. That's what drives all the "humanitarian crises" around the crossings -- Israel shuts down Rafah (by closing down the Israel-Egypt crossing at Karnei Shalom, I think) to force traffic through Israel-Gaza crossings and to keep Gilead Shalit inside Gaza, while Hamas does the opposite, to create photo ops and shortages.
Egypt would be happy to have the crossings open, for outbound traffic anyway.
? Israel doesn't control the Rafah crossing, Egypt, the PA (not sure how that works now) and the EU do. Israel can shut it by not letting the EU observers in (according to here) apparently. Wanna bet they could work something out to let aid shipments in? It looks to me like the problem isn't really aid, it's commerce, anyway, and Egypt doesn't really have any.
Wanna bet they could work something out to let aid shipments in?
Of course they could, but Hamas controls the Palestinian side, and they have no incentive to compromise because of the usual win-win situation for them. (Free traffic through Egypt is a win; fuel and food shortages are a win.)
In any case, Emanuele Ottolenghi seems to understand none of this, blaming the closures on Egypt, which is a bit alarming from a professor specializing in Israel!
Israel does in fact control the Rafah crossing and keeps it closed by not allowing the EU observers access. The observers presence is required under the agreement with Egypt and the PA for the crossing to open. And in any case the Rafah crossing allows only foot traffic, not vehicles or cargo of any sort.
Not exactly, not according the B'Tselem report I linked:
Yes, but haven't the EU observers run away fearing for their lives?
...and Hamas is on the Gaza side on all the crossings (see next post when I post it). It's a clusterfuck -- for Israel as well as it should be for Egypt. That's the source of Ottolenghi's ire as I see it.
It's a (i.e., another) manufactured crisis. Arab leaders (in this case Palestinians) declare that they will destroy Israel, rocket Israeli towns and settlements and claim victory over the Zionists.
Then, when the population, fearing that Israel, which has been pin-pointing terrorists (with the usual mistakes) will do to them what they intend to do to the Zionists, flee en masse from the Zionist menace, a "tragedy of immense proportions, of untold dimensions" is created.
Now what does that remind you of?....