Wednesday, January 30, 2008

Reuniting Egypt and Gaza

Daniel Pipes has a suggestion:
...Washington and other capitals should declare the experiment in Gazan self-rule a failure and press President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt to help, perhaps providing Gaza with additional land or even annexing it as a province. This would revert to the situation of 1948-67, except this time Cairo would not keep Gaza at arm's length but take responsibility for it.

Culturally, this connection is a natural: Gazans speak a colloquial Arabic identical to the Egyptians of Sinai, have more family ties to Egypt than to the West Bank, and are economically more tied to Egypt (recall the many smugglers' tunnels). Further, Hamas derives from an Egyptian organization, the Muslim Brethren. As David Warren of the Ottawa Citizen notes, calling Gazans "Palestinians" is less accurate than politically correct.

"Egyptians and Palestinians are one people,
not two peoples," says a sign held by a
Palestinian on Jan. 29, 2008.

Why not formalize the Egyptian connection? Among other benefits, this would (1) end the rocket fire against Israel, (2) expose the superficiality of Palestinian nationalism, an ideology under a century old, and perhaps (3) break the Arab-Israeli logjam.

It's hard to divine what benefit American taxpayers have received for the US$65 billion they have lavished on Egypt since 1948; but Egypt's absorbing Gaza might justify their continuing to shell out $1.8 billion a year.
As long as the destruction of the fence separating Gaza and Egypt is being compared to the fall of the Berlin Wall, we may as well keep in mind that the latter was an artificial barrier imposed upon one people--according to Pipes the same might be said about the fence between Gaza and Egypt as well.

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