Communicating Arts - Main Web SiteIsrael vs. Hamas has overnight become Israel and Egypt vs. Hamas.
Intending to brake the retaliatory siege for having launched rockets (and continuing to do so) against Israel, Hamas breached Gaza's border with Egypt last week.
Egypt withstood the first waves of rightly miserable Gazans yearning for food and fuel and comfort and then responded to the break with razor wire and construction. In the wake of less than accommodating talks with Hamas, the character of the conflict has returned within the past 24 hours to its inherent nature: fire and force. [1]
Even David had but one Goliath for an antagonist.
Political Analyst Daniel Pipes suggests Egypt should absorb Gaza on the basis of general cultural affinity. [2]
Egypt, however, would seem to fear the fundamentalist and militarized Hamas, which caution about hosting warriors it would seem to share with Lebanon and Jordan. For the nonce, of course, it has also its peace treaty [3] (and trade) with Israel for consideration.
Here's Item 2 of Article III of Egypt's treaty with Israel:
"Each Party undertakes to ensure that acts or threats of belligerency, hostility, or violence do not originate from and are not committed from within its territory, or by any forces subject to its control or by any other forces stationed on its territory , against the population, citizens or property of the other Party. Each Party also undertakes to refrain from organizing, instigating, inciting, assisting or participating in acts or threats of belligerency, hostility, subversion or violence against the other Party, anywhere, and undertakes to ensure that perpetrators of such acts are brought to justice."
"I against my brother," the first phrase of the well known saying, has come too bitterly to life at Gaza's border with Egypt.
However, the brother who has the better friends--more peaceful, more reliable, better tempered, and stronger--may now well resent the threat to and destruction of peace and trade that intrudes with hatred in the head and Kalashnikov in the hand.
For a taste of how it starts (or has started, if not yet ended), the International Herald Tribune provides this nugget from the period following the border's resecuring and the stranding of some Gazans and Egyptians on the respective wrong side of the fence:
"Eyewitnesses said anger boiled over in the late afternoon as people on both sides waited for permission to cross over. Hamas policemen in the area encouraged people in the area to throw rocks at the Egyptians. Youths began pelting an Egyptian command post in the area, and forces there first threw stones back, and then fired tear gas. Medics said 26 people were treated for tear gas inhalation." [4]
The Associated Press filing in the International Herald Tribune has reported one dead, a 42-year-old Palestinian, and six wounded.
1. "Egyptian forces trade fire with Palestinians at border." Reuters AlertNet, February 4, 2008.
2. Pipes, Daniel. "Give Gaza to Egypt." Jerusalem Post, January 30, 2008.
Correspondence: James S. Oppenheim
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