"A one-hundred-dollar bill does wonders with an Egyptian police officer at a Sinai roadblock who intercepts a truck packed with 'pipes.'" — Efraim Inbar and Mordechai Kedar, BESA Center, January 22, 2009.
This is just another example of how, when Palestinians become victims of oppressive measures taken against them by their Arab brothers, the world does not care a bit. About a decade ago, when Egypt demolished dozens of houses and buildings in Rafah as part of a campaign to combat terrorism, no one said a word against the Egyptians -- or even bothered to look.
If the Egyptians actually cared about the Palestinians, instead of blocking the entry of aid into the Gaza Strip, they could easily coordinate with Israel though alternative border crossings such as the nearby Kerem Shalom terminal.
Evidently the Egyptians would rather see the Gazans starve; then, the international community, as usual, would hold only Israel responsible.
That is the real problem: Where is the demand from the international community for Egypt to deliver aid to the Gaza Strip? Where are social media posts, the US college campus protests, and the op-eds condemning Egypt for deliberately withholding aid from Gaza's Palestinians?
Why doesn't the Biden administration pressure Egypt, and not just Israel, to allow aid to enter Gaza for the Palestinians?
Egypt has, in fact, been imposing a blockade on the Gaza Strip for the past 15 years.... Where are the protestors calling to stop the billions in aid to Egypt? They do not, of course, exist. The protests were never about helping Palestinians. They were always only about attacking Jews.
This is the same Egypt that been displacing thousands of Palestinians from Rafah after demolishing their homes and is now blocking aid to the Palestinians, that has piously decided to join the South African case against Israel at the ICJ.
Now that Israel is attempting to dismantle a terrorist group whose primary objective is the elimination of Israel, the Biden administration and many in the international community suddenly claim they are "outraged."
If they really want to help the Palestinians, they could begin by filing cases against Egypt and the Arab states in the region that, for many decades, have turned their backs on the Palestinians and paid billions to their governments to keep on mistreating them.
If the Egyptians actually cared about the Palestinians, instead of blocking the entry of aid into the Gaza Strip, they could easily coordinate with Israel though alternative border crossings. Evidently the Egyptians would rather see the Gazans starve; then, the international community, as usual, would hold only Israel responsible.
On May 12, Egypt announced that it will support South Africa's case in the International Court of Justice (ICJ), where Israel is accused of "genocide" for defending its citizens against Hamas's murderers and rapists who invaded Israeli communities on October 7, 2023. The announcement came in response to the ongoing Israeli military operation against Hamas terrorists and bases, especially in the city of Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip.
If the South Africans had any decency, they would not only call out the Egyptians for being hypocrites and liars, they would also file a case with the ICJ against Egypt for its role in transforming the Gaza Strip into a weapons depot and continuing to deprive the Palestinians there of humanitarian aid.
Last week, Egypt refused to coordinate with Israel on the entry of aid into the Gaza Strip from the Rafah border crossing ostensibly due to Israel's "unacceptable escalation," reported Egypt's state-affiliated Alqahera News satellite TV. The official also said that Egypt held Israel responsible for the deterioration of the situation in the Gaza Strip.
The Egyptians are, in reality, upset because Israeli forces on May 7 seized the Rafah border crossing between Egypt and the Gaza Strip.
For the past 15 years, the Palestinian side of the terminal was controlled by Hamas and profitably used by both sides to smuggle weapons and terrorists.
Over the past few decades, Egypt, for considerable remuneration, has allowed the smuggling of weapons into the Gaza Strip from its territory.
"The expectation that Egypt will put an end to the traffic in the tunnels under the Egyptian-Gaza border is not realistic – for strategic, political and domestic reasons," according to a report by the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies at Bar-Ilan University.
The report, although published in 2009, remains as relevant as ever:
"At the strategic level, Egypt sees Israel as a competitor in the quest for hegemony in the Middle East, and has for years turned a blind eye to the arming of Hamas via the tunnels. Simply put, it had, and still has, an interest in bleeding Israel...
"The two-faced policy being pursued by the Mubarak administration also serves a useful purpose in domestic Egyptian politics. In contrast to Europeans and other foreigners, Egyptian citizens easily recognize and comprehend their government's double-dealing. Everybody in Cairo understands that the government is facilitating the arming of Hamas; and turning a blind eye to the tunnels weakens the argument of the Islamic opposition that the government is cooperating with the Zionists. Moreover, curbing the traffic in the tunnels would worsen the economic situation in Gaza.
Pictures of suffering in Gaza or of Palestinians climbing the fences to get into Egypt only help the Islamist opposition.
"Finally, Egypt's double game is also result of a complex reality in the Sinai Peninsula. As with other Third World states, the Egyptian government is not fully in control of its territory. Thus, an international agreement on ending arms smuggling from Sinai into Gaza will face considerable problems of implementation, even if the Egyptian regime wants it to happen.
"Notably, most of the smuggling into Gaza is led by Egyptian Bedouins who live in the northern Sinai. These tribes do not speak Egyptian Arabic, they are not really an integral part of Egyptian culture and society, and they do not subscribe to Egyptian political ethos. They make a living by smuggling women and drugs to Israel, as well as arms, ammunition, and missiles to the Gaza Strip.
"Egyptian attempts to extend law and order to Bedouin areas have met armed resistance. Every time the Egyptian regime attempts to curtail the Bedouin smuggling activities, they carry out a terrorist attack on a Sinai resort, as has happened in Taba, Sharm el-Sheikh (twice), Nueiba, and Ras al-Satan. Such attacks negatively influence tourism to Egypt, an important source of income, and seem to be an effective way of "convincing" the Cairo authorities to live and let live.
"Bribery, an important element in the Egyptian ways of doing business, also facilitates the smuggling of weapons into Gaza. Low-paid Egyptian officials in Sinai can hardly resist hefty bribes. A one-hundred-dollar bill does wonders with an Egyptian police officer at a Sinai roadblock who intercepts a truck packed with 'pipes.'
The likelihood that policemen at Egyptian checkpoints will stop taking bribes from trucks transferring arms to Gaza is very low – unless the Egyptian government decides to heavily punish such behavior. Only execution of smugglers could have a deterring effect, but such a determined Egyptian government behavior is also unlikely."
By turning a blind eye to its widespread smuggling industry, Egypt significantly contributed to transforming the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip into a major base for Islamist terrorism.
If the Egyptians actually cared about the Palestinians, instead of blocking the entry of aid into the Gaza Strip, they could easily coordinate with Israel though alternative border crossings such as the nearby Kerem Shalom terminal.
The Egyptians, however, are refusing to send aid to the Gaza Strip through the Kerem Shalom border crossing. For the past week, the Egyptians have been blocking aid to the Gaza Strip by refusing to coordinate the entry of truckloads through the Rafah and Kerem Shalom border crossings.
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Bassam Tawil is a Muslim Arab based in the Middle East.
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