Pipes: Give Gaza to Egypt
Professor Dan Pipes argues that Egypt should be given responsibility for Gaza:What might Western states now do? The border breaching, ironically, offers an opportunity to clean up a mess.Egypt does not want more Islamist radicals who would oppose the Mubarak government as part of its population. They will never agree to this, although obviously they should be responsible. Pipes' idea looks nice in academia but will not happen so long as the Mubarak government is in power.
Washington and other capitals should declare the experiment in Gazan self-rule a failure and press President Husni 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.
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.
But please note the points I highlighted in the excerpts above. They ought to tell you where the blame for Gaza should be laid.
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 7:02 PM
3 Comments:
Agreed. Its a better than the Palestinian reichlet the world wants to force upon Israel. Unfortunately, the Middle East is the last place one sees common sense. Since its just much easier to blame and dump the entire shtinker upon the Jews.
The Palestinians want to revert to the '67 borders.
This is an excellent opportunity to start.
Re-unite Egypt with Gaza.
responsible. Pipes' idea looks nice in academia but will not happen so long as the Mubarak government is in power.
Mubarek is not the reason this will never happen. The "palestinian people" myth is the best thing that ever happened to the post-shoah jew haters of the world. Think they give that up for order and peace.
Washington and Jerusalem are too in love with this two state solution to ever go back now - these things have a forward momentum and what is bad for Israel becomes the floor for the next bad thing in both political arenas.
All of the Presidential candidates and two-stater, Fatah and Abu Mazen are greaters.
If Israel and the US wanted to make this part of their platform it could, but they won't because the Palestinians (as has every artifically created entity like Iraq, become the Palestinian People, the Iraqi people). Bush and Washington conventional wisdom has transformed any person living within a boundary into a unified "people." The same reason there will never be three separate countries in Iraq - which is what should happen, is the same reason it will never happen with the "ancient" "palestinian people." It is just too radiacal a concept for the Washington establishment to think of them as anything other than a nation.
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