{"id":10260,"date":"2010-06-09T08:41:14","date_gmt":"2010-06-09T15:41:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=10260"},"modified":"2010-06-09T08:41:14","modified_gmt":"2010-06-09T15:41:14","slug":"why-does-egypt-support-the-gaza-blockade","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=10260","title":{"rendered":"Why Does Egypt Support The Gaza Blockade?"},"content":{"rendered":"

One question I’ve seen come up again and again this week is, why has Egypt’s Mubarak <\/a>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<\/a>, in his excellent Foreign Policy<\/em> article<\/a> about Egypt’s collaboration with Israel on the Gaza blockade:<\/p>\n

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. ((Note: Hamas, the government of Gaza, is part of the Muslim Brotherhood<\/a>. –Amp<\/em>)) […]<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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, … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40,61],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10260","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-international-issues","category-palestine-israel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10260","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10260"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10260\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10260"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10260"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10260"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}