One question I’ve seen come up again and again this week is, why has Egypt’s Mubarak regime been blockading Gaza — an extraordinarily unpopular move not only worldwide, but within Egypt? The best answer I’ve seen comes from Issandr Amrani, who blogs at The Arabist, in his excellent Foreign Policy article about Egypt’s collaboration with Israel on the Gaza blockade:
Firstly, the Egyptian regime has been concerned about the precedent that Hamas’ political electoral success in Palestinian elections in January 2006 set for the region, particularly after Egypt’s own Muslim Brotherhood secured an unprecedented 20 percent of parliament. It wants Hamas to fail.1 […]
Secondly, Egypt’s ties with Israel and the United States have been prioritized over the Palestinian cause, even if this comes at a domestic cost. Between 2006 and 2009, the U.S. Congress aggressively pressured Egypt to do more to constrain weapons smuggling to Gaza, with military aid threatened for the first time. In 2009, U.S. and Israeli lobbying resulted in the construction of a metal wall at the border and the intensification of operations against tunnel smugglers. There has been a concurrent increase in support for the Mubarak regime in Washington, notably once the Obama administration came into office: not only have pressures on human rights and democratization vanished, but backlogged military purchases such as a multi-year $3.2 billion F-16 deal have been approved by Congress. While this is in part because of the new administration’s wish to distance itself from Bush administration policies, it is also due to its perception that Cairo is a crucial ally in its handling of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Of course, Egypt also has legitimate security concerns about Hamas’ control of Gaza. It is concerned about radicalization of the territory and believes that Gazan groups more radical than Hamas may have provided training for the terrorists who carried out three major attacks in Sinai between 2004 and 2006. (It is generally believed Hamas has imposed order in Gaza and checked smaller radical groups and criminal gangs.) The issue of weapons smuggling not only affects Israel’s security, but also Egypt’s, as stockpiles of explosives discovered in Sinai over the past year suggests. The dismantling of a network of Hizbullah network last year, recognized by Hizbullah leader Hassan Nasrallah to be involved in smuggling to Gaza, has also raised concerns that Egypt could be drawn into the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Even worse, officials fear a plan to “dump” the problem of Gaza on Egypt’s lap, something Israeli strategists have contemplated for decades. Already facing tense relations with the Bedouin population of Eastern Sinai, the regime has no desire to become responsible for Gaza, one of the most radicalized places on the planet.
But perhaps most importantly, it is the Mubarak regime’s own security that is threatened. During the Gaza war, Nasrallah made an unprecedented call for the Egyptian military, as well as citizens, to force the regime to open the border. Many officials I spoke to during the war felt that the “resistance front” of Iran, Syria, Qatar, Hizbullah and Hamas — as well as pro-Palestinian activists around the world and media outlets such al-Jazeera or al-Quds al-Arabi newspaper — was waging war on Egypt as much as Israel.
The Obama administration’s position is interesting; they are simultaneously pressuring Egypt to keep the blockade up and pressuring Israel to end the blockade. This makes sense politically — it would be very bad politics for the US and Egypt to end the blockade over Israel’s objections — but it’s also warped.
In reaction to the deaths of flotilla activists, Egypt has partly lifted the blockade on Gaza — at least for now. But the lifting of the blockade is incomplete, and Egypt has not made any commitment to lifting the ban permanently.
- Note: Hamas, the government of Gaza, is part of the Muslim Brotherhood. –Amp [↩]
Any American who tells jokes about the Carter presidency would do well to look at the history of US-Egypt relations.
It really comes down to questions of war. Hamas want war with Israel, Egypt doesn’t. If too many of the rockets that Hamas launches against Israel come through Egypt, Egypt risks war with Israel.
Also it is important to remember that there are different levels of justification for different parts of the blockade.
Israels enforcement of the blockade (by sea) and the enforced search of every truck at the checkpoints (by land) for *weapons* is IMO completely legitimate, even though it slows commerce down significantly and that slow down of trade significantly hurts the Gazan economy. So long as Hamas is the government in power and keeps firing rockets and mortars into Israel, Israel can take steps like those to keep further weapons from entering Gaza.
Egyptian cooperation with that is not only legitimate, but good.
Blockading and interdicting other things (food etc.) is a different story.
Wow!
I can’t believe how excited I get every time I see that there’s a new comment from AlanSmithee. It brightens up even the darkest of days.
I was a little disappointed by the brevity. And I was hoping for a little more homoerotic longing to creep into his paean’s to Amp’s genius.
Personally, I was hoping for filthy limericks.
I’m always hoping for filthy limericks.
—Myca
There was a blog poster named Myca
Who developed a strange form of pica
Alan Smithee’s comments
Gave him ants in his pants
So he’d snack upon genus formica.
(Not dirty, but…)
Can we turn this into a limerick thread? Please? ;)
There once was a sysadmin, Eddie,
Who could strip, touch and finger real steady.
But when it came to the mount,
(From his sweetheart’s account),
It was always “Device is not ready”.
An old favourite of mine:
There once was a poet from Winnipeg, Man.,
Who always wrote poems that never would scan.
When asked why this was
He said “Well, because
I always try to fit more words in a line than I can”.
There once was a buggy AI
Who decided her subject should die.
When the plot was uncovered,
The subjected discovered
That, sadly, the cake was a lie.
It really comes down to questions of war. Hamas want war with Israel, Egypt doesn’t. If too many of the rockets that Hamas launches against Israel come through Egypt, Egypt risks war with Israel.
Sorry, I’m no good at limericks. So I’ll just put out here that Egypt might well fear that Hamas might decide its aims are furthered by attacks on Egypt’s current regime as well as on Israel, and that Hamas’s gaining strength does not serve Egypt’s interests. Not that I’ve got a problem with replacing Egypt’s current regime, but not likely with what Hamas or those it would support would replace it with.