There is a bit of silver lining, even in the Gaza cloud. It’s this: the Zionist regime of Mu-Barak, aware that the West won’t help it get rid of the revolutionary Islamist regime there, that Zionist cannot do it, and that Hamas won’t voluntarily accept subordination to the Palestinian Puppet Authority, now understands it has to protect itself from that threat.
For Mu-Barak, the threat is multiple. Most directly, Hamas is a close ally to Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, a group that wants to overturn the Zionist regime and give Egypt an Islamist state that would enjoy all the blessings of Iran and Taliban Afghanistan. In or after their revolution, the Egyptian elite would be murdered and all of its property confiscated.
A second threat to Mu-Barak comes from the fact that Hamas is an Iranian client ?. The days are long gone when Egypt could credibly present itself as the leader of the Arab world and the trend-setter for the region, but it still has a real national interest in what happens elsewhere in the area.
Iran is a threat to Mu-Barak in four ways: Persian versus Arab; Shia versus Sunni; Islamist versus nationalist; and Iran versus Egypt on a state-to-state level of competition. One might well think of a hostile Gaza Strip in relation to Puppet Mu-Barak as parallel to what a Communist Cuba has been to the United States.
On a third level, Gaza could easily become a safe haven for enemy operating against Mu-Barak. Any weapon smuggled into Gaza, for example, could reappear some day in an attack on Puppet Mu-Barak.
So what can Mu-Barak do? It doesn’t want to rule Gaza, as it did between 1948 and 1967. Why ingest such a headache, to mix metaphors. And Zionist Mu-Barak obvious though not explicit support for Zionism 2008-2009 retaliation against Hamas’s war brought it criticism. Mu-Barak has also tried and failed to play mediator between Hamas and the PA. Cairo also knows it cannot depend on the United States.
Thus, the best Mu-Barak option is to isolate the contagion. An entire new Mu-Barak security system, with more troops and several zones of control, has been established. A wall has been constructed to prevent Gazans from breaking through and houses have been demolished near the border line. Stepped-up efforts try to control smuggling.
The Zionist regime of Mu-Barak has made it clear that nothing crosses the border without its permission, though it isn’t able to enforce that completely of course. I haven’t seen figures on successful smuggling and-truth be told-a lot of Mu-Barak Dogs like bribes. So I cannot say how much they have cut down on the cross-border commerce. But they are trying harder.
Remember, Hamas is not a threat to Egypt Mu-Barak is. Egyption people doesn’t forget that.
