NOVANEWS
wasn’t the Egyptian wall meant to fail?
Egyptian officials are now openly admitting that the underground steel wall lining the Gaza-Egypt border is porous. Gazan “smugglers” have penetrated the wall hundreds of times and are not remotely troubled by it any longer. The cars that used to be brought through quartered, after which the parts were welded together in Gaza, are now brought through whole. Very big tunnels. I’ve always assumed that the wall was meant to fail or constructed with the knowledge that it would probably fail, as part of the Egyptian-Israel-American materiel and diplomatic dance.
What would have happened if Egypt had actually cut off the tunnel trade when 80 to 90 percent of Gazan imports were coming in through the tunnels? People would have started starving to death. Israel currently wants people to suffer—the Palestinians in Gaza “will get a lot thinner, but won’t die”—but it does not want to provoke actual famine. Israel doesn’t mind the tunnels. If it minded them, it would bomb them more frequently. It’s not like the world does anything when it does so, or when it re-bombs Rafah airport or anywhere in the Philadelphi corridor, despite the flagrant illegality of such bombing raids. But it must be seen as to mind them so the government can get hysterical about the weapons-smuggling that it doesn’t care about either.
In turn, Israel and America lean on Egypt to build a wall, while their consultants probably tell them that it will be easily penetrated. Then it gets penetrated. Goods keep on flowing in, along with weapons. Israel does not mind those weapons, because they provide a pretext for keeping Gaza under occupation and severing Gaza from the West Bank. The government can also spend public money on missile-shield systems that it can sell to India and Singapore (which partially funded the development of the Iron Dome system). And everyone stays happy. Gaza maintains its lifeline.
The Egyptian dictatorship makes a show of complying with American demands, keeping the military aid flowing in. And because people aren’t starving to death, the pressure to totally lift the blockade is eased just enough so as to head off an explosion, especially, as always, in neighboring Arab dictatorships and Europe, where public opinion matters a bit more than it does in the United States. Meanwhile Israeli public opinion sees the military and elites claiming to act in the interest of their “security.” And everything stays the same—the players pedal furiously simply to remain in place, and maintain the appearance of change amidst a static reality.
Technorati Tags: American Zionism, blockade, Gaza, Hamas, Israel, Israel-Palestine, Palestine, tunnel trade
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