The Washington Post has an editorial that actually places the blame for Gaza chaos where it belongs. They blame Abbas and Egypt. Okay, you can get up off the floor now.
Mr. Abbas’s problem is in part one of weakness; it’s not certain that the security forces loyal to him could impose order by force in Gaza even if he ordered them to. Egypt’s failure is far harder to excuse. The government of Hosni Mubarak formally committed itself to send Egyptian troops to replace the Israeli army on the border between Gaza and Egypt and to maintain security. No agreement has yet been reached on opening a crossing, mainly because of Israel’s legitimate security concerns. But Egyptian troops this week have allowed thousands of Palestinians to pass back and forth, urged on by Hamas fighters who have blown holes in the fence. Egypt announced that it would put a stop to the traffic by yesterday evening. According to news reports, the crossings continued.
Read it all. Print it out, frame it, and refer back to it from time to time. Hell, even the slap at Israel’s conservatives is a mild one.
On the other hand, Israel is worried that Al Qaeda is going to infest Gaza.
The collapse of the Gaza-Egyptian border in the three days since Israel withdrew from the Strip, which has allowed thousands of Palestinians to enter Sinai and numerous Egyptians to enter Gaza, is extremely worrisome to Jerusalem. Israel is fearful not only of massive arms smuggling into Gaza, and consequently to the West Bank, but also, and particularly, that Al-Qaida operatives will be able to enter Gaza freely.
“We’re talking about Iran, we’re talking elements in Syria, we’re talking
about groups like Hezbollah and we’re talking also about international
terrorist groups like al-Qaida,” said Foreign Ministry spokesman Mark Regev.In addition, Israeli intelligence officials say Palestinian terror organizations have been making a concerted effort in the last few days to smuggle as many weapons as they can into the Gaza Strip via the breached border with Egypt, which wanted Hamas and Islamic Jihad activists have been crossing freely.
And worse still, the pals are trying to infiltrate Israel after having come in from Egypt:
Border Policemen and Israel Defense Forces trackers in the southern Negev region early Thursday morning arrested 20 Palestinians residents of the Gaza Strip attempting to infiltrate into Israel along the border with Egypt.
The Palestinians, who were arrested in three different incidents, said they exited the Strip through the Philadelphi route which borders with Egypt, and where Palestinians have been able to cross unhindered in and out of Egypt since Israel completed its withdrawal from Gaza.
The arrested men were taken for police questioning to establish whether they wished to enter Israel in order to carry out terror attacks. IDF officials said they expected this phenomenon of Palestinian infiltrations from the Sinai into Israel to repeat itself and widen.
Perhaps Israel needs to build another, higher wall to keep the terrorists out. Oh, wait. They’re already doing that on the Gaza side. It, of course, has been protested by the palestinians.
Not to say “I told you so” but …
Now we know why Sharon pushed the disengagement button so hard and demonized the opposition.
Hi Meryl,
This is what I got the first time around “Logged in as Cynic. Logout »” so here goes once more.
That was to give the Palestinians time to move the arms and other weapons waiting for them in Sinai into Gaza.
Don’t tell em that the Egyptians didn’t know about the stockpile.
The thing that is important is asking what in the world is Ms. Rice doing.
Is the State Department going along with the European Arab Dialogue of the 70s?