The Siege of Gaza has Failed

[Tom Joad]

(comment: seems Israel is losing often these days, but it comes at a terrible price to many people. Certainly Israel was successful at causing much pain and suffering to the people of Gaza, but i think the people of Gaza now have the world's support. Even Haaretz sees that. )

While politicians and the media are waiting with bated breath for publication of the Winograd report on the Second Lebanon War, a new situation is taking shape on the Egyptian border that might eventually result in a new investigative committee. The diplomatic and security situation that arose on the Israeli-Egyptian border once the Egypt-Gaza border was flung wide open has apparently not yet penetrated the Israeli consciousness. But it is time to start asking pointed questions about the events of this week instead of about those of July 2006.

The border with Egypt was breached in a single moment, with no warning. It is impossible to refrain from asking whether any of our decision makers, or any of those who whisper in their ears, foresaw this scenario and prepared for it. When Vice Premier Haim Ramon boasts of the impressive decision-making process that preceded last fall's military operation in Syria, his words sound bizarre in light of what is happening in the South.

While hundreds of thousands of Palestinians are streaming into Egyptian Rafah and Hosni Mubarak is having trouble reestablishing the border, while Hamas has succeeded in ending the siege of Gaza via a well-planned operation and simultaneously won the sympathy of the world, which has forgotten the rain of Qassam rockets on Sderot, Israel is entrenching itself in positions that look outdated.

The prime minister speaks about the need to continue the closure on Gaza, and the cabinet voices its "disappointment" with Egypt - as if there were ever any chance that the Egyptians would work to protect Israeli interests along the Philadelphi route instead of thinking first of all of their own interests. The failure of the siege of Gaza, which the government declared only a week ago to be "bearing fruit," and especially the fear that this failure will lead to a conflict with Egypt, requires the government to pull itself together and prove that it has been graced with the ability to solve crises and to lead, not merely to offer endless excuses for its leadership during previous crises.

As hundreds of thousands.....

more http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/948081.html

[PDJane]

1. I don't know why our governments still support Israel.

They learned all the wrong lessons from the Holocaust...

[oberliner]

3. Six million Jews annihilated in the Holocaust, and they didn't even learn the right lesson!

It is sickening that anyone could even think to make a post like the one above on a webiste such as this one.

[PDJane]

5. There is nothing in that fact

That justifies what Britain, the US and Israel have been doing to the Palestinians who, after all, were thrown off the land which they lived on.....and had for more than 2,000 years.

Nothing justifies that basic injustice, since there has been no compensation to those people.

Nothing justifies the Jews-only roads or the checkpoints.

Nothing justifies the way that Israel has used and depleted the Palestinian water resources and turned them off the farms that they still own.

Enough. You can't atone for genocide with another genocide, especially since the Palestinians weren't the people who engaged in the genocide.

Time to quit and to learn to get along.

[LeftishBrit]

7. While it would indeed be a good idea for everyone to learn to get along...

calling any part of the I/P situation 'genocide' is misleading. War, terrorism, occupation, oppression - these are bad things but they are not genocide. Genocide involves a systematic attempt to exterminate people of a particular ethnic group. The Palestinians have not been well treated (by anybody), but they have not been exterminated. In fact, their population has increased over the years.

What is happening in Darfur is genocide.

[PDJane]

8. And you don't believe the palestinians fall there?

That's an interesting idea, but it is sophistry. It is genocide, and it is deliberate.

[hack89]

9. Just how many Palestinians have died since 48?

I doubt that IP ranks in the top 100 of post WWII conflicts when it comes to deaths. You do no one a favor when you dumb down the concept of genocide - it takes away any significant meaning.


on edit: it actually ranks 65th:

http://tmq2.wordpress.com/2007/03/28/ranking-of-death-tolls-the-66-most-lethal-conflicts-after-1950/

12,000 since 48 is not genocide

[Truth2Tell]

58. How many is genocide? nt

[LeftishBrit]

10. So all war is genocide?

ETA, to avoid misunderstanding: all war is horrific, but the term genocide does not apply to all war.

[Violet_Crumble]

19. I agree with you that it's not genocide...

I think that yr definition of genocide is a good one to use, though the official definition created by Raphael Lemkin does flesh it out a bit and go into more detail. This is only a minor niggle on my part, as you are right in what you say about no part of the I/P conflict being genocide, but an attempt to exterminate people is only one of the indicators of genocide. The others are ones like imposing measures to prevent births in that group, and forcibly transferring children of that group to another group. While neither of those indicators apply to the I/P conflict, there have been cases of genocide where the victims of genocide haven't been exterminated but there has been an attempt to wipe them and their culture out by carrying out forced sterilisations and taking their children away from them and put to work as servants or placed with families of another group. That's what happened to Aboriginals here in Australia and while the first part of the genocide was the more familiar and easy to spot physical killing of members of a group, the genocide continued well into the 20th century with the latter two being the methods used to wipe out the Aboriginals...

[rateyes]

43. What would you call putting up a blockade to separate a whole

population from the rest of the world, and stopping food supplies from getting to them---thus attempting to starve that population to death?

[oberliner]

12. This whole argument is repulsive

Here are a couple of the apparently "wrong" lessons:

Sometimes people actually mean it when they announce that they would like to kill Jews. (See the Hamas Charter and/or Mein Kampf)

The Jewish people can not stand by and allow fellow Jews to be killed with impunity (See the Hamas terrorist attacks of the last two decades)

[PDJane]

18. That's a sophistry, and it's wrong.

I do not deny the holocaust nor the great harm that it did, not only to the Jews but to the gypsies, the Polish and the Dutch. I have a much smaller family than I would have otherwise had because of the Nazis and their camps and their war.

I do not deny that there are those who would kill Jews, as there are those who would exterminate gays and the disabled and those who are "unfit" for whatever reason.

However, since Gaza is a huge prison, albeit an open-air prison, that seems to have been the wrong lesson to take from the holocaust.

One cannot atone for murderous opression by becoming the murderous oppressor. That's not how this works.

Peace can come; but it will not come without some concessions on the part of Israel which Israel has never made, and will not make without pressure. Peace will not come without reparations to the Palestinians for the land, for their livelihoods, for the all too many deaths.


Marwan Barghouti v. Israel has a fine list of the charges against Israel: articles one through twelve enumerate casualties. http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=22&ItemID=2423

The Badil report shows just how much damage has been done to the palestinians. That report says, in part:

Palestinian refugees and internally displaced persons (IDP) are the largest and longest-standing unresolved case of refugees and displaced persons in the world. In 2006-2007, there were approximately 7 million Palestinian refugees and 450,000 internally displaced Palestinians representing 70 percent of the entire Palestinian population worldwide (10.1 million). The legal status of some 400,000 additional Palestinians is unclear, but they too are likely to be refugees. The forced displacement of Palestinians, both refugee and non-refugees is ongoing in the OPT and Israel as well as in some host countries, in particular in Iraq and Lebanon.

Displacement in 2006-2007 occurred as a result of Israel's war on Lebanon (16,000 refugees displaced), the events surrounding the destruction of Nahr el-Bared camp (31,000 refugees displaced) in Lebanon and the persecution faced by Palestinian refugees in occupied Iraq (over 15,000 refugees displaced).

The Jews are not the only people in the world who have suffered from hatred and genocide. There is lots of company. In this century alone, the First Nations people, the Armenians, the East Timorese (native women were given contraceptives or were forcibly sterilized), the vietnamese, the Congolese, the Cambodians, Nanking, Russia.......if we hadn't been busily spending money on weapons and killing one another off in new and amazing ways, the population of the world would likely have stabilized long ago.

It can't, however, continue. We have one world, it is shared, and the things we are doing to the environment with our current wars will kill us all if we don't smarten up.

The Jewish population is still not the be-all nor the end-all of the discussion. Throwing the Palestinians off their land and taking the remainder by force will simply not atone for the 6,000,000 who died in the camps. The Palestinians were not involved in that war. They are now occupied by a force which is breaking international law, and it's time to cease.

[oberliner]

22. Your description of the history between the Israelis and Palestinians is not factually accurate

The initial idea was that the Jews would get to have an independent state (much less than they land that is currently Israel) and that the Palestinian Arabs would get an independent state as well. This would allow (theoretically) for one country in the world to be a place where Jews need not fear expulsion or extermination. This plan was rejected by the Arab states

The behavior you see the Israeli government engaged in now regarding the Palestinians comes from lessons learned not from the Holocaust, but rather, from the manner in which the Jewish state has been treated by its neighbors since its inception.

Certainly one is free to be critical of Israeli policy, but to accuse Jewish Israelis of having learned "the wrong lessons" from the Holocaust demonstrates both a lack of sensitivity and a lack of understanding the reality of the past sixty years.

[PDJane]

26. Where did you get your history?

The original plan was that Jews and Palestinians would share the same territory. That was what was planned by Balfour.

Unfortunately, that did not suit the Zionist plans. In order to convince the British that the Jews and Palestinians could not live together, the Jews engaged in terrorist acts (of course, the palestinians retaliated), culminating in the bombing of the King David Hotel. That was done by the Irgun, and it was a planned and concerted effort that culminated in the 1947 declaration giving a portion of Palestine to the Jewish state.

The Palestinians were subjected to harassment and other forms of pressure, and a great many of them either were killed or were moved into refugee camps.....while the jews inhabited their homes. Was it fair to the Palestinians? No. Was it right to give the Jews a state? Yes, but there was no reason to remove palestinian territory to do so. The Palestinians are still bearing the brunt of holocaust reparations, and that's neither right nor fair.

The arab states quite rightly had supreme reservations about that plan....because there was a population on the land, and they were about to be disposessed. The Arabic states were trying to recover from the British and French efforts at empire, and their own occupation....and the concerted effort to wipe out the jews had nothing to do with the arabic states.

Zionism, by the way, actually began shortly after the turn of the century; the holocaust was a recruiting tool.

Israel can use the Palestinian desire for their own land....the land they lived on for at least 2,000 years...as a reason for their continued occupation of more and more of Palestine, but it doesn't hold much credibility, frankly. Israel has outgunned the Arab states from the beginning; even the six day war was a farce. Israel provoked that war, and it wasn't fought with the fervor that one would expect; mostly because the Arabs knew they were outgunned from the beginning.

Even when Yassar Arafat made huge concessions, Israel would not bend on their demands. There will not be peace until that happens....and until compensation for the land and livelihood of those expelled from the land is given.

It is an occupation, and a vicious, lopsided occupation. There is no excuse.

[msmcghee]

27. I'll have to save this one for cut and paste.

It's the most concise version of the "Narrative" I've seen yet. The first sentence is the only sentence in the whole thing that isn't an bald-faced vicious lie. I guess that's what they call a loss leader.

Every other sentence is just about opposite the actual history and facts. Did you write that yourself? Or did you find it on one of those special websites that are a bit fanatical about Jews?

One thing. You should drop the part about the holocaust being a recruiting tool. It kind of blows your cover doesn't it?

[Shaktimaan]

28. Wow. Just... wow.

So in your reality the Palestinians accepted the premise of a Jewish homeland in their midst and welcomed the Jewish immigrants but the Zionists, (who demanded all of the land for themselves), initiated terrorist strikes against them, forcing the Palestinians to retaliate in self-defense!

Is this honestly what you believe or are you just trolling? If this is actually your view of history, please, please, please tell me where you learned it.

On edit: After re-reading your post I don't think I gave it the credit it deserves by paraphrasing your first paragraph alone. I wasn't able to find a single sentence that was historically accurate. I mean, nothing about it touched on any facts that are under dispute by even the most radical factions of either side. You chose to refute the most basic, accepted history of the region. If this summary is what you truly believe then I am aghast that someone, somewhere is actually teaching this absolute nonsense as fact.

Picking out a single representative example here... Israel can use the Palestinian desire for their own land....the land they lived on for at least 2,000 years. demonstrates the level of ignorance on display. It truly raises more questions than it answers. Who do you think the Palestinians are descended from that you believe they have lived there since over 600 years before the Arabs even invaded? The Romans perhaps? The Jews themselves maybe? Or is it actually possible that you think this land was inhabited by Arabs since before the time of Christ? It boggles the mind to try and imagine the historical Palestine you take as gospel fact. I mean, even if you know practically nothing at all about the history of Palestine you surely must have heard a little bit about the story of Jesus Christ, right? Apparently not. You bring new meaning to the term "blank slate."

Unless that post was just to wind us up. Please tell me you were just having a laugh. (Or at least say that you aren't a product of the US public school system. There's only so much I can take.)

[LeftishBrit]

29. Good grief...

'The original plan was that Jews and Palestinians would share the same territory. That was what was planned by Balfour.

Unfortunately, that did not suit the Zionist plans. In order to convince the British that the Jews and Palestinians could not live together, the Jews engaged in terrorist acts (of course, the palestinians retaliated), culminating in the bombing of the King David Hotel. That was done by the Irgun, and it was a planned and concerted effort that culminated in the 1947 declaration giving a portion of Palestine to the Jewish state.'

Wow. That is certainly historical revisionism. It is well known that some Arab groups were suspicious of the Balfour plan for a Jewish homeland from the beginning - resulting in several attacks on Jews in Palestine as early as the 1920s. It wasn't originally 'the Zionists' who opposed it. And you cannot explain territorial conflict between Jews and Arabs as all due to Zionists wanting to convince the British that Jews and Arabs couldn't live together. There were indeed Jewish terrorist groups, mainly the Irgun and Stern Gang, but they were not the mainstream of the Zionist movement or even its military force(that was Haganah). The bombing of the King David Hotel was a terrorist act against the British, not against Arabs, and it was not the reason why Israel became a state - in fact it probably impeded statehood.

'Zionism, by the way, actually began shortly after the turn of the century;'

Actually before that - at least as far back as the 1880s.

'The holocaust was a recruiting tool.'

What exactly do you mean by that?

'even the six day war was a farce. Israel provoked that war, and it wasn't fought with the fervor that one would expect'

Israel didn't provoke it, and it was fought pretty fiercely. And what about the Yom Kippur war. Did Israel provoke that too?

Where do you get this from? I have come across SOME, not all of it, from speeches by Ahmadinejad; for the rest, it doesn't seem to represent even conventional anti-Zionist accounts of history.

[PDJane]

31. Yeah, Israel did provoke the six-day war,

It was deliberate, and the arabic states were outgunned from the beginning. That was not a grand and glorious adventure...it has been portrayed as the spunky little Israel fighting back for her existence, when it was nothing of the sort.

http://video.google.ca/videoplay?docid=-4144954716305864975&q=six+day+war+deceptions&total=9&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=0

This is from a former UN observer.

Yes, you are correct, zionism started in russia in the late 1800's. The first world war exacerbated the problem because of the Balfour declaration, which kept Palestine from being a state....the Palestinians were not supposed to be swept from Palestine, but to be assimilated into a Jewish state, and no, that didn't suit either side. And yes, we, the Jews, did engage in terrorism, including some terrorism against our own people living in Arabic states, in order to swell the population of Israel. Putting it very bluntly, we needed a population and cannon fodder.

The second world war led to the attempted genocide of the Jews, and others, which did not succeed fully, but which led more and more people to the ideal of an independent Jewish state. That is what I meant by stating it was a recruiting tool. Palestine, having not been made a state when the british left because of the balfour declaration, was the intended site.....and the fact that Palestine was never given a state was the excuse and the reason for the state of Israel being dropped into the middle of Palestine.

Israel had not ruled that land for more than 435 years, and had not been the rulers of the entire area for more than 260 years, and that 2,000 years ago, a short period in the historical record. Even before the Romans, the area was NOT totally Israel; it had been broken. That happened even before the era when Christ is supposed to have existed, the so-called common era.

The history of the region is confounded by the biblical "record," which is fiction. The fossil records and the historical records do not support that history; the land has been continually inhabited, and fought over, since the time of the earliest hominids. The jews could not have been "given" that land when it was vacant, because the land has never been vacant! Sometimes it was settled and farmed, sometimes it has been nomadic; that happened because of varying levels of rainfall. The actual record of the area shows various peoples coming and going, being invaded and repelling occupiers, for a long, long, long time before the Jews ever showed up.

There is no reason but the bible for the jews to lay claim to that area....and that book is not an accurate record, but a basis for an irrational belief. It is, in my view, less valid than ancestor worship, and the followers of the God of Abraham scare the hell out of me.

Now you can, of course, flame me for that. That's fine. It's a personal view that the entire world should be subjected to classes on comparative religions from grammar school.

In this case, religion does nothing but cloud the issue.

[msmcghee]

32. When I read things like this I see it as very ominous.

This is not about arguing over blatantly ridiculous claims and accusations like this. The seriousness of what's going on in the world is about how reality and history are being horribly twisted - how the lies are so eagerly believed - how those lies are feeding the destruction of a whole nation of people - how the worst misogynistic and racist regimes in the world are applauded and cheered by the left - that's the real story here.

Just look at the DU campaign forums. I've never seen such hatred and viciousness. Some factions have transformed into tribal monsters - each one ready to destroy whatever seems vulnerable in the world - even in their own party.

The American liberal left has lost its way and I'm afraid the whole world is about to pay the price.

[PDJane]

33. There is no hatred......

that's projection. I don't hate anyone here or there.

I do not, however, have any stake in believing the propaganda. It's not my monkey, and I refuse to accept delivery. The ridiculous claims have been coming from the noise machine, and the problems on the ground won't get fixed until we stop yelling.

Moreover, the way that the US and Israel wage their wars is damaging to a very fragile ecosystem. It's enough.

Learn to listen to the other guy; they have a point of view too. You want to stop the Quassams? Instead of trying to push a resolution through the UN, try accepting the cease-fire offers and deal with Hamas. Hamas has offered a cease fire and offered to deal. Israel won't do it. They want to "eradicate" Hamas. Brilliant.

If the aim is really stopping the strife and fighting, deal with the facts...deal with Hamas. Deal with Iran. Neither Israel nor the US want to do so. That's just plain old self-defeating; to say I won't deal with you until you elect the people I want to office is a really interesting way to approach the world, but it's patently foolish.

Don't accuse everyone who doesn't agree with you of hate, either. I don't like what Israel or the US is doing in the middle east, but that's probably because I get a whole different variety of news, and have a different viewpoint. I don't hate them, I don't want to push anyone into the sea, I don't deny the holocaust....I just want a peace that isn't going to come without a change in the hard-line idiots on both sides. That's not hate.

If I hate anything, it is the conviction of right that both the US and Israel seem to have; the conviction that they are so righteous and holy that they deserve their aims. That's an attitude that will get all of us into trouble.

[LeftishBrit]

39. Please tell me where you get your info from!

I don't think that the allegations of a single ex-UN observer, many years after the war, are enough to prove your point.

The point is: (1) do you think that the Jews should have a homeland? (2) if so, where? - and if your answer is "Europe", what about all the Middle Eastern Jews; (3) do you not accept that there were many Jews living in Palestine long before 1948?

Also: even supposing that one accepts that you're right, and that Israel's existence is based on almost as immoral a foundation, as, oh, I don't know, that of the USA or Canada or Australia, all of which are at least in part based on the destruction of native communities - does that mean that we should destroy Israel now? Are we going to destroy America or Canada or Australia, or evacuate all the white people and give these countries back to what survives of their native communities?

'It's a personal view that the entire world should be subjected to classes on comparative religions from grammar school.'

Actually I fully agree on that and it is increasingly the case in the UK, I am happy to say. But even if this happened, it would not stop the territorial rivalries of different ethnic/ religious/ national groups.

[bemildred]

40. Actually, there are Israeli sources for that.

I'm not going to google them up again. I've had this discussion here before, at least once. Nobody changed their mind.

It seems to me that it was a successful war of conquest initiated by Israel, which caught the Arabs napping. It was not until the Yom Kippur war that anyone in their right mind thought that the Arabs could be a fair match for Israel.

[Vegasaurus]

41. Well

The first action was when Nasser requested the withdrawal of UN forces from Egyptian territory, mobilized units in the Sinai, and closed the Gulf of Aqaba to Israel.

Those facts aren't even in dispute, are they? That is basic History 101.

[bemildred]

42. Like I said, nobody changed their minds. nt

[Vegasaurus]

2. Israel will have won

if Egypt takes responsibility for the Palestinians. Israel does not need the headaches of Gaza.

Unfortunately, the Egyptians are going to seal the border as soon as possible, and they already have border police who are enforcing the law (and getting injured in the process). Of course, no one will say a word about the Egyptians' use of weapons, dogs, etc., against the Palestinians, or the fact that they want to close their borders. If will only be Israel's responsibility to supply food and fuel to people who are enemies.

[Tom Joad]

4. amazing how little respect the geneva convention gets here

and so many do not recognize the duties of a military occupier toward the people they occupy. yes, the people of gaza hate israel, as any people hate their oppressor, but that does not let Israel off the hook.

It does not let Egypt off the hook either, for their dreadful acquiescence to Israeli and US demands that it reseal the border.

[Lithos]

6. Conspiracy has no place

Review the history of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt who have extremely close ties to Hamas. Nassar, Sadat and Mubarak have long attempted to reduce and eliminate the influence of this group in Egyptian politics, often through violent means. It was a related group who assassinated Sadat. Egyptian policy starting back in the late 1950's when Egypt was in the Soviet Camp and was a sworn enemy of Israel and the US was to isolate and destroy the Muslim Brotherhood. The policy of containment that is practiced now is just a continuation, Israel and the US have little to do with this.

L-

[Tom Joad]

11. if you think Israel and the US demands make no difference to Egyptian

leaders, fine. Then it seems that Israeli leaders are wasting their breath when they insist on its closure. But i said nothing about "conspiracy", and i wish you would not bring these accusations to this forum.

[Lithos]

15. You stated that Egypt was only acting

At the behest of the US and Israel as a sock puppet and lacked original motivation. Cabalistic control is a form of conspiracy theory.

Alternatively you can derive the same conclusion by noting that your claim is, as Noam Chomskey stated for his own definition of conspiracy theory, the opposite of the institutional analysis. Egypt's motivation is a long standing result of economic, social and political events which have shaped Egyptian politics for 50+ years and not some plot that runs counter to existing norm. The succinct most direct answer is Egypt and Israel are both at odds with religious extremism which Hamas represents.

Egypt and Israel both fear an increase in terroristic incidences as a result of the uncontrolled border. Hamas itself and its allied Muslim Brotherhood both freely use terrorism (bombing hotels, etc.) as a tactic. In that vein, Israel has issued warnings to its citizens to avoid traveling to the Sinai and has increased the border security along its Sinai border. Egypt also has erected numerous internal checkpoints trying to stem any movement of people away from the immediate area. No car or Gazan citizen is allowed to travel much beyond Rafah.

[bemildred]

16. Yes. I think Egypt is probably more annoyed about this than Israel.

And with good reason. Hamas appears to have taken a fairly belligerent attitude, on the Egyptian side, too.

[Violet_Crumble]

17. I think yr reading things into the comment that weren't there...

You said that Tom stated that Egypt was acting as a sock puppet and lacked original motivation....

This is what Tom said: 'It does not let Egypt off the hook either, for their dreadful acquiescence to Israeli and US demands that it reseal the border.'

I agree with what he said and don't see anything of a conspiracy theory nature in it, though it's interesting to note that conspiracy theories like the one concerning the killing of Mohammed Al-Dura run unchecked in this forum...

Both Israel and the US have been making demands that Egypt reseal the border. But you said in a following post that Egypt is exerting control by not allowing Palestinians to venture further than the Egyptian side of Rafah, and I read that Egypt is not allowing weapons to cross the border in either direction. I suspect that what Israel and the US mean when they demand Egypt exert control over the border is to not allow civilians to cross in order to stock up on day to day necessities that they can no longer get in Gaza. After all, if they can cross into Egypt to do that it kind of defeats the purpose of this blockade thing...

Maybe this is a simple way of looking at it, but right now Egypt knows the whole world is watching what's going on and I kind of doubt they want to look like the bastards they'd look like if they resealed the border. But Egypt would also be worried about pissing off the US too much which accounts for the promises that they'll take care of it. As far as I'm concerned as long as there are no weapons being allowed to cross the border, and civilians are able to take advantage of it to alleviate the shortages that have been making their lives a misery, then it's really hard to understand the line taken by Israel and the US on this...

[Tom Joad]

21. well, all Egyptians are watching the government.

i think they will be in deep shit with their own people if they did not help the Palestinians. So it works both ways. there are concerns that if they were to crack down too hard, this will make a not so popular government all the less popular. and then all sorts of things could happen. What kind of demonstrations would they have faced if they shot all the people coming across the border? They might become unstoppable. But if they don't crack down, besides their own desire do anything to help Hamas, they will face pressure from Israel and the US... and from the US they get very substantial economic aid. I cannot imagine that anyone would say that would not be a factor.

[bemildred]

23. Yes, and Hamas, on the other hand, would not mind a bit of bloodshed.

The sight of Egyptian troops shooting starving Gazans breaking through the barrier to freedom would be drama of a high order, and political dynamite. That is the most striking thing about this so far, that way it's been set up and managed well as a political drama.

[pelsar]

53. wrong universe

I think they will be in deep shit with their own people if they did not help the Palestinians

they will help as little as they can.....the Egyptians as a society, like the lebanese, jordanians, Syrians, iranians, saudis, iraqis, kuwaitis.....not only dont they give a shit about the Palestinians, but they see them as a dangerous element within their own countries... i might add, history does provide some evidence that this is not irrational either.

[Douglas Carpenter]

54. its a mixed thing and I would have to agree that there is a lot of hypocrisy

Everybody feels sorry for the poor, downtrodden and the oppressed. But nobody wants them moving in - at least in large numbers and taking over the neighborhood.

But I would have to mostly agree with Tom that at this particular moment and time - sympathy for the Palestinians is running pretty high and will probably remain quite high until or unless there is a large number who decide to stay behind and make their new homes in Egypt.

Perhaps its roughly comparable to white northern liberals who decried the Jim Crow laws and the obvious racism of the South - but would have fainted at the thought of having real live black people living as their neighbors and buying up the property on their street.

And if you add to that the equation that these new neighbors' identity and loyalty was is not at all to the country that is hosting them (and the locals believe generously hosting them) - but their loyalty and identity was and is to a stateless nation - their welcome would be short lived.

[pelsar]

55. i wouldnt bet on that sympathy.....

sympathy for the Palestinians is running pretty high and will probably remain quite high

they're sympathetic until it comes to do something about it, like you wrote about the Jim crow laws and the nice northern liberals.........

my prediction?....that hamas forces egypt to keep its border open (an interview with the hamas leader on Israeli TV yesterday...he said he wants to break off all economic ties with israel). Gaza will go off on its own, breakaway from the westbank....and the Egyptian sinai will find itself have some of its resorts bombed......

Egypt will then become the jailer of the gazans......and there will be no intl pressure for them to do anything about it....

and the biggest losers will be the Palestinians living in gaza....

[Vegasaurus]

56. There definitely will be no international pressure

because somehow the prevention of food or fuel going to Rafah is OK if the decision is made by Egypt, but not by Israel.

[Lithos]

24. acquiescence

Is a compliance without protest and in context intimates the Egyptians are not their own masters. Egypt is most definitely not a puppet of Israel, the US or any other power.

As for Egypt not allowing weapons, well they weren't allowing weapons before, but Hamas somehow smuggled in quite a bit of armament including ostensibly Iranian built missiles, mostly through tunnels. They did this without the "acquiescence" of the Egyptians who also were quite vigorous in shutting down tunnels as the Israeli's were when they occupied Gaza. Now with a much more fluid border, do you think Egypt is going to have more or less control over what enters and leaves Gaza?

L-

On Edit:

As for Egypt, I agree wholeheartedly that they do not want to extend the drama anymore than necessary. However, I think their motivation lies not with the US or Israel, but with 1) Minimizing Hamas/Muslim Brotherhood's power/influence and 2) Finding a way to settle the conflict in Gaza in order to provide stability to their border. Not only do the terrorists in Hamas/MB kill civilians, they also hurt the Egyptian tourist industry which is vitally important to the economy.

[Tom Joad]

20. Haaretz and Ynet are feeding into this "conspiracy theory" by announcing that

Israel is putting pressure on Egypt on closing the border. I suppose they must be fellow travelers.

I do think that Chomsky would readily admit that Egypt is being pressured by Israel and the US, its all part of the reality there.

and you make no comment, about the original problem. which is the siege on the people of Gaza by the Israeli regime, which seeks to bring Gazans on the very brink of starvation in order to bring the end of the Hamas government.
The toll now is 20-30% of Gaza children malnourished.
How many will never reach their full potential of because of this deliberate act of what amounts to terror on the part of Israel, with backing from the US?

maybe you could comment about that. or the protests held by Israeli and Palestinians civilians together at the border. or the 12 congresspeople who have signed letters to Rice stating their concern for international law.

[Lithos]

25. Already commented on that

Israel asked for the reasons I stated above. However, Egypt is hardly "acquiescing", nor is the pressure much more than direct government to government communication.

and you make no comment, about the original problem. which is the siege on the people of Gaza by the Israeli regime, which seeks to bring Gazans on the very brink of starvation in order to bring the end of the Hamas government.
The toll now is 20-30% of Gaza children malnourished.
How many will never reach their full potential of because of this deliberate act of what amounts to terror on the part of Israel, with backing from the US?

Red Herring Logical fallacy. We were talking about your statements concerning Egypt. I could at this point with equal logical clarity ask you about your non-statement about Hamas' seizure and control of food, fuel and medicine to allow for preferential distribution and artificially deepen the crisis inside of Gaza? Or their unnecessary escalation of tensions with Israel knowing it would spark a crisis? Sounds like Hamas is not concerned so much with the will of the people of Gaza, but with the establishment of a Hamas' controlled state.

As for International Law. I support the HRW's January 24th statement which urges specific changes from all sides.

[Vegasaurus]

30. Interesting how all those poor and starved Gazans

managed to find the money to buy television sets, refrigerators, telephones, computers, camels, oxen, gasoline and lots and lots of cigarettes. They kept the Rafah economy on the Egyptian side very busy.

Where did all that money come from?

[Scurrilous]

34. You can't eat money.

"Where did all that money come from?"

From their bank accounts, savings, etc.

[breakaleg]

35. No shit. That made me laugh. nt

[Vegasaurus]

36. I'm glad you are so amused

I read that prior to breaking into Egypt, shopkeepers or people who tried to sell in the open air markets in Gaza made very little money on any given day, because Gazans were so poor they didn't even have "five shekels". They were starving remember? No money for food.

So it is a legitimate question, since they didn't have enough money to buy food last week, how they were buying big screen tvs and refrigerators this week.

Your sense of amazement should be directed at answering the appropriate question.

[breakaleg]

37. Funny. All the reports I've read concern the seige, the lack of goods coming in, for the shortage.

[Vegasaurus]

38. Doesn't answer my question either though

If 85% of Gazans are without work, and they are so poor everyone is starving (at least that's what they bloggers say; no way to know if that is true or not), how were they hauling back tvs, computers, and refrigerators?

I watched the video and looked at the pictures. There was massive commodity exchange from Rafah. But it does beg the question; if these Gazans were so poor and under siege, unable to find work, had no money to feed their families, how did they manage to purchase camels and computers?

It boggles the mind.

[pelsar]

47. israeli TV reported...

that hamas has been making israeli money and gave the gazans before they left for egypt $300+

[azurnoir]

48. There was a thread here yesterday

got locked or deleted or something about how Gazans used counterfeit money and Egyptian shopkeepers sold them out of date food items in return.
Hamas did the counterfeiting, sounds like a more "cottage industry" to me but who knows

[azurnoir]

49. Post a link

you've been saying this stuff for days, you can not post video's here but links are acceptable.

[rateyes]

45. One cannot buy food that is not in the markets to buy. nt

[Tom Joad]

14. My point is that of course Egypt may have its own domestic reasons for closing the border,

but it may have pressure applied to it by outside, including the US and Israel. to call this a "conspiracy theory" is really far fetched.

In fact, it may be that keeping the border open may do more to undermine the Muslim Brotherhood than anything else. If the people of Egypt see that its corrupt leadership are so throughly cold-hearted that they cannot help the people of Gaza now, then more and more will be attracted to the Muslim Brotherhood as an alternative.

[Tom Joad]

46. Joel Beinin and the limits of "Egyptian acquiescence"

It appears that the Annapolis summit and the sham "peace process" it was supposed to have reinvigorated are dead - killed by tens of thousands of unarmed Palestinians crossing the boarder into Egypt to meet their basic human needs. Shortly before President George W. Bush's visit to the Middle East, Israel began an expanded campaign of pressure on the Gaza Strip, including an escalation in targeted assassinations. Hamas has sent several signals that it was prepared for an informal ceasefire with Israel. But the political perspective articulated at Annapolis and its aftermath requires that Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas cooperate with Israel in crushing Hamas rather than try to restore Palestinian national unity. Egypt's task in this drama is to stand silently by.

The Israeli government led by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert opposes the kind of agreement that a Palestinian national unity government would demand, as has every previous government of Israel. Such an agreement would require recognition of Palestinian national rights rather than paternalistic "concessions" granted by a magnanimous but ultimately all-powerful Israel.

The limited capacity of the Egyptian government to acquiesce to this program has been exposed. The Mubarak regime would like very much to see Hamas crushed, since it is an ally of the Muslim Brothers, its most substantial domestic opposition force. But the Palestinian cause is too popular and emotional an issue in Egypt for Mubarak to appear to be assisting Israel in starving the people of Gaza. Moreover, some of the demonstrations in solidarity with Gaza also raised slogans against the drastic rise in the price of food in recent months and against Husni Mubarak himself. Opposition demonstrations linking the Palestine cause with domestic economic issues and autocracy have the potential to threaten a regime whose legitimacy is already minimal.

http://www.hagada.org.il/eng/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=215
This is from Joel Beinin, a history professor from Stanford University, currently in Cairo. So he can join your list of people you will accuse of fostering "conspiracy theories". Though i will take Joel's insights any day over the frankly shallow stuff i have seen you post. He seems to know what he is talking about.

Here is my perspective:

I think many people think that merely by Israel offering a few concessions... a little land there, a few less roadblocks over here, and so on, add a little concert, and nice textbooks extolling the virtues of Israel as a State for its Jewish citizens and voila, peace comes!

My perspective is based on the rule of international law, and that we must insist on promoting the full human rights of Palestinians in their homeland. This can mean a two-state solution or a one-state solution, (it will certainly mean a place with Palestinians and Jews living side by side... in some configuration or another) but we cannot expect real peace unless it goes beyond what Israel is in the charitable mood to offer, backed by the United States.

I can't help but think that the usual approach is doomed to failure. Israel must be forced to deal with the Palestinians as equals, not as subjects to be offered mere concessions. That is the only option for those who support human rights, peace, and justice.

of course, the "peace and quiet" contingent will continue to do their thing, to the detriment of Israelis, Palestinians, and the rest of the planet. The early 21st century version of the "constructive engagement" approach of corporate america (fully backed by an overwhelming margin in Congress until the heat was felt on the streets) to South Africa, or the approach of the "liberals" Martin Luther King vented his disgust for in his "Letter from a Birmingham jail".


Justice is coming. It will come despite the "peace and quiet" people of the Bush White House and the other defenders of the status quo.

[Lithos]

50. Supports my point fully.

You stated that Egypt would take an active role acquiescing (implying sockpuppetry) to US/Israeli demands. I countered above that Egypt would follow its own line in the matter independent of Israeli demands. Egypt so far has acted independently and in its own self-interest and you thankfully have highlighted the portion which emphasizes and validates my point. Beinin lays out a case for what Egypt's line is which in no way acquiesces to an outside power, your original statement, and in fact must choose an independent course.

It does not let Egypt off the hook either, for their dreadful acquiescence to Israeli and US demands that it reseal the border.

Thank you.

[Tom Joad]

51. but from what i understand you support the "process" that Joel

calls a sham.

It is true that Egypt has not been entirely playing the role the US has expected it too... and they may pay a significant price because of that.

[Lithos]

52. Never expressed support one way or another

I was stating as a fact that Egypt preferred containment which is fully supported with the comment in your snippet concerning strong Mubarak's desire to contain/destroy the MB. The only reason they are not being more efficient in the matter w/r to Gaza is that they are 1) constrained to 750 armed police and 2) the desire to not appear unsympathetic to the plight of the average Palestinian. None of this means that Egypt supports or is going to be very friendly to Hamas and likely to continue supporting efforts which undermine their control.

As for paying a significant price, what price? Given the continuing US effort in the ME and that Egypt continues to allow not only preferential access through the Suez Canal, but also overflight and base privileges on Egyptian airfields, I find that hardly likely. Egypt is an ally, maybe not to the same degree as Israel, Kuwait, or the UAE, but still an ally.

L-

[rateyes]

44. There is a vast difference in "not supplying food" and

blockading others from supplying food.

[ohio2007]

13. "Freedom on the march" and yes, denile is a rivier within reach

;)

[mac2]

57. Genocide

http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_2865.shtml