Hamas is stopping people from leaving Gaza. No surprise there. So are the Egyptians. Ditto.
By the time the Islamic militant group Hamas declared victory in Gaza Thursday, thousands of Palestinians had already fled the coastal strip.
Recent figures collected by European monitors at Rafah, the crossing into Egypt, show that some 14,000 Palestinians have left Gaza in the past year, driven by a combination of political insecurity and economic strain.
“Today, there is no way to get out of Gaza. All passages are closed,” says Shlomo Dror, Israel’s spokesman for the coordinator for government activities in the territories.
“The real people controlling Rafah are Hamas, because they’re just outside the checkpoint and they’re controlling who can come and go,” he says.
Palestinian officials had asked to close Rafah over the weekend when they saw they could not protect European monitors there, Mr. Dror says.
“We’re not in charge there and we can’t do anything about it. The only way we can help the Palestinians is to take over the area, which we don’t want to do,” he adds.
Dror says that Hamas militants have set up a checkpoint on the Palestinian side of the Erez Crossing into Israel, about 330 feet beyond the one Palestinian Authority police usually run, and are stopping cars to arrest anyone who’s a member of Fatah. “It’s enough for people not to even try to come to the checkpoint,” he says.
And the Egyptians, the great champions of Palestinian rights—so long as they are chastizing Israel for them—don’t want their Palestinian brethren coming to their country. Not even to save themselves from Hamas.
Egypt sent police to beef up security on the border with Gaza. Authorities deployed armored vehicles and water cannons to prevent any potential mass flight of Palestinians out of Gaza, while searching for tunnels under the border through which infiltrators could pass.
Please note that when offered it, Egypt did not want to take Gaza back. Nor will they today, even though that’s the most logical move. No, the decades of manipulation by Yasser Arafat, with the complicity of the world, nattering on about the “inalienable rights” of the Palestinian people—that’s what has brought about this day. Not Israeli occupation. The failure of the Arabs to take care of their own is the cause of the breakdown of law in Gaza. The deliberate victimization, and the cult of victimology of the Palestinians is the reason 1.4 million Gazans live in abject poverty—with the exception of the few thousand who are in with the kleptocrats and the thugs who have controlled Gaza for decades.
And yet, in spite of the evidence that is growing before the world’s eyes, Israel will still be blamed by most of the world. The Palestinians will never be held responsible for voting in the terrorists who have just eliminated any last vestige of democracy in Gaza. The Palestinians, the world said, was tired of Fatah’s corruption. That’s why they voted for Hamas.
In America, we have a saying about situations like this: You made your bed. Now lie in it.
Meryl, if you don’t think that both the *Egyptians* and the *Palestinians* and the *Israelis* all have a hand to play in where we are now, you’re simply refusing to be realistic.
Your criticisms of Egypt and the Palestinians are spot on, but then your conclusion that the occupation had nothing to do with the problem just doesn’t follow from your criticisms. It’s wishful thinking.
Really? Because Israel offered to give back all of the territories except for Jerusalem, right after the Six Day War, and the Arabs said, in unison, “No.”
It isn’t wishful thinking. It’s attributing the problem to its roots: Arab rejectionism of the Jewish state.
Oh, come on, just give them the right of return and they’ll all settle down and get jobs and become good neighbors. Really, they promise.
And, therefore, because of that offer after the 6 Day War, *NOTHING* that’s happened since then is germane to the question.
Meryl, you’re very very smart, but there’s always a gap in your reasoning between your assumptions and your conclusions, where your will sneaks in and amps up the conclusion to be what you want to believe.
That isn’t what Meryl said, Eli, and you know it. Troll somewhere else.
Eli, had Arafat died before he came back from Tunis, and the local population been allowed to continue the path they were on at the time (unofficially developing a modus operandi to live with Israel) the terrorists would not have gotten a foothold. Now we are reaping the bitter fruits of that original error.
Eli, the Arabs could have had their land back immediately after the war. They chose not to treat with Israel. That puts the ball in their court.
For the past 40 years, they have insisted that the only thing they will accept is a return to the status quo of June 4, 1967.
You know, they lost the fucking war. Let them act like the losers they are for once, and accept that they don’t get to have everything they want. Because that’s still what they want, forty years later.
The ones that don’t want Israel’s destruction, that is. And there are many that do. If not all.
Arab rejectionism is the underlying problem here. It always has been. Only now it’s been radicalized and Islamicized.
Actually, Meryl, the 6/4/67 lines are hardly the Arabs’ resting place. And it’s worth mentioning that from 1949 to 1967 the Arabs constantly reiterated that the 1967 lines were only cease-fire lines, points at which they’d agreed merely to stop fighting for the time being, until the moment was ripe to wipe out the Zionist entity.
Once, if at all, Israel retreats to those lines, does anyone doubt that the 1947 partition lines would come into play? The Arabs figure that wars are cost-free enterprises; if they win, they wipe out Israel and if they lose they get to start all over again. Since neither other Arabs nor anyone else has ever suggested otherwise, they have no reason not to believe it.
Like I always say, you don’t need high tech weapons to destroy a nation, or a race. You don’t need even need a real army.
All you need is to be granted unlimited second chances, with no penalties for trying and failing. Sooner or later, one of the attempts will succeed, no matter what the odds are againt you. It’s like playing a slot machine that you don’t have to put money into; just pull the lever as fast as you can enough times, and you’ll hit the jackpot sooner or later.