[Tonic]

Nice to see the Egyptians supporting their muslim brothers

Gaza border breach fuels anger over food shortages

Reuters

Mon 28 Jan 2008

By Will Rasmussen

RAFAH, Egypt, Jan 28 (Reuters) - Armed Egyptian Bedouin opened fire in the air to warn away Palestinians, highlighting growing anger over food shortages and price rises triggered by the breaching of the border wall with Gaza, witnesses said.

The confrontation in the town of al-Joura occurred as residents on the Egyptian side of the border said shops had run out of goods since hundreds of thousands of Palestinians poured into Egypt when Hamas militants blew up the wall last week.

"The stores are empty and what is available is so expensive," said Youssef Ali, a Bedouin in the divided border town of Rafah. "The Bedouin are poor. The income of many Bedouin is not more than $30 a month."

The Islamist Hamas group, which controls the Gaza Strip, breached the wall so the territory's 1.5 million people could stock up on food in short supply due to an Israeli blockade. Israel tightened it in response to cross-border rocket attacks.

But the emptying of shop shelves and a block by Cairo on new supplies has prompted thousands of Palestinians to go home since Sunday, with some saying it was now easier to shop in Gaza than in Egypt.

"The places are closed or empty. I am going back empty handed," said Mahmoud Mansour, a 52-year-old from Gaza City.

Rafah residents and shopkeepers said the price of tea and some other goods had tripled. A pack of cigarettes had increased to 5 Egyptian pounds (90 cents) from 1.5 pounds.


EGYPTIAN STANCE

Many Egyptians say they are suffering since Cairo began blocking supplies of food, petrol and medicine to the Sinai peninsula to discourage Palestinians from crossing into Egypt.

Egypt does not want to be seen aiding an Israeli blockade but fears the influence of Islamists and having large numbers of Palestinians without identity papers on its territory.

Hamas seized control of the Gaza Strip in June by routing Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas's forces.

The Egyptian Foreign Ministry said on Monday Cairo wanted Abbas's Palestinian Authority to control border crossings.

"There were too many people and too much money coming in. All the food is finished and the petrol is finished," said 36-year-old Mohamed Farah, an Egyptian government employee.

Many shops in Rafah were shut on Monday due to lack of supplies and even those that were open had nearly empty shelves.

Mohamed Suleiman Mahmoud, who owns a small supermarket, said he had ordered 20,000 Egyptian pounds of cheese, milk, fruit and vegetables but the shipment was still being held up by Egyptian authorities at a bridge linking Sinai with mainland Egypt.

A Reuters reporter saw hundreds of trucks carrying sugar, rice, medicine, livestock and carpets at the bridge on Monday.

Mohamed Saber from the Doctors' Syndicate Relief Committee said 13 trucks with food, blankets and medicine had been held up at the bridge.

The Palestinians poured tens of millions of pounds into impoverished towns on the Egyptian side of the border when they streamed across to stock up on food, petrol and other goods.

Some Egyptian civil servants quit their jobs temporarily to become street vendors or money changers while business flourished.

"There were too many people and too much money coming in. All the food is finished and the petrol is finished," said 36-year-old Mohamed Farah, a government employee. (Additional reporting by Alaa Shahine, Aziz El-Kaissouni in Cairo and Yusri Mohamed in Ismailia, writing by Alaa Shahine, editing by Ralph Gowling)



http://africa.reuters.com/wire/news/usnL28733455.html

Of course, Palestinian survival also requires shiny new motorcycles:




A Palestinian smiles as he returns to Gaza with his new motorcycle, bought in Egypt, at the border between Egypt and Gaza, in Rafah, southern Gaza Strip, Friday, Jan. 25, 2008. Hamas-backed militants driving bulldozers knocked down more Egyptian border fortifications on Friday in a brazen challenge to Egyptian forces who are trying, with little success, to gradually reseal the breached border using human chains, dogs and water cannons. (AP Photo/Lefteris Pitarakis)

[Rodion]

That's a nice motorcycle. You know, they're people, too. People need more than "survival" to truly "live". I understand the desire to break the blockade without "surrendering" to Israel, it's just that for some reason, Palestinians think we're "at war" and not shooting rockets at God forsaken villages will hurt their side somehow. I've said it before and I'll continue to say it: "resistance" groups are the worst enemy Palestinians have.

[hadzo]

You know, they're people, too. People need more than "survival" to truly "live".

it appears that that right is only reserved for some people on this planet. Palestinians and many other according to rich and powerfull these days have only right to exist.

.... and that is unfortunate!

[Abood]

That's a nice motorcycle. You know, they're people, too. People need more than "survival" to truly "live". I understand the desire to break the blockade without "surrendering" to Israel, it's just that for some reason, Palestinians think we're "at war" and not shooting rockets at God forsaken villages will hurt their side somehow. I've said it before and I'll continue to say it: "resistance" groups are the worst enemy Palestinians have.

Whatsup with me agreeing with Jews these days?

[dannymu]

If Egypt had the same border security arrangements as Israel these invadors would have been shot and this mess probably wouldn't have happened. Since when is it acceptable for foreigners to enter a country illegally?

[Verv]

I guess sanctions do not work against people who have so little respect for their neighbors, even the ones that support them in ideology, that they allow for such an action to take place.

And we want these guys who refuse to clampdown on rocket attacks and would rather knowingly violate the sovereignty of another nation then give in to be the government of Palestine?

It is almost enjoyable to read little stories of the complete moral bankruptcy of the Hamas government.

[Tonic]

Verv

And we want these guys who refuse to clampdown on rocket attacks and would rather knowingly violate the sovereignty of another nation then give in to be the government of Palestine?

The border between "Gaza" and "Egypt" is fictitious. The Gazans just crossed the "Palestinian" Rafah to the "Egyptian" Rafah. Rafah is a Palestinian city on both side of the border divided by the 1979 Camp David accord. It was Egypt territory until 1967. Before that the British ruled it under the title "Palestine" but they forged that "Palestine" from land captured from the Turks. The pepole all over the place were Egyptians back than...Yes The Brits created all that mess. Until the Brits there were no "Palestinian" identity.

[Far-Right Sage]

The "Palestinians" have been a cancer in every land they have forced themselves upon. They started an uprising in Jordan, a civil war in Lebanon, they have been plaguing the Israeli nation with terror attack after terror attack for years, and now, this crisis in Egypt.

Is it really any surprise?

[Tonic]

Some Home Truths


Palestine as geographic unity created by the British, they also gave its name derived from greco-roman name. Its boundaries decided between the European powers after the fall of the Ottoman Empire.

From the end of the Jewish state in antiquity to the beginning of British rule, the area now designated by the name Palestine was not a country and had no frontiers, only administrative boundaries; it was a group of provincial subdivisions, by no means always the same, within a larger entity.

Additionally, the Ottomans settled Muslim populations as a buffer against Bedouin attacks; Ibrahim Pasha, the Egyptian ruler, brought Egyptian dwellers with his army in the 1830s. It is noteworthy that the common Palestinian name al-Masri, used by a clan in Nablus, literally means "the Egyptian."

The British Foreign Office Peace Handbook, No. 60, Syria and Palestine, (HMSO, l920) declared that “the people west of the Jordan are not Arabs, but only Arab speaking... In the Gaza district they are mostly of Egyptian origin; elsewhere they are of the most mixed race...”

So many of these "Palestinians" arrived from outside "Palestine," with the defeated army of Abd el-Kader, with the veterans of Mehmet Ali, with the European Muslims transferred by the Ottoman government from the former Muslim-ruled lands in Europe in the 1880s, from Iraq and Egypt and the Emirate of Trans-Jordan in the period 1920-1940. True, there existed some secondary cultural and linguistic differences that separated Palestinians from other Arabs in Jordan, Syria and Lebanon. But these were less substantial than similar differences separating Arabs living in different regions within Iraq, within Egypt, within Libya, or within Morocco.

Actually, three of the most famous "Palestinians" are George Antonius, born of Lebanese-Egyptian parentage and a Christian Arab, Edward Said, a Christian Lebanese born in Cairo and educated at Victoria College in Alexandria, and Mr Palestine himself. See, among others, Arafat's Palestinian biographer, Said K. Aburish, in Arafat: From Freedom Fighter to Dictator.

The official status of these areas, then, was disputed territories, as no one had held sovereignty there since the defeat of the Ottoman Empire.

[AmericanPatriot]

If Egypt had the same border security arrangements as Israel these invadors would have been shot and this mess probably wouldn't have happened. Since when is it acceptable for foreigners to enter a country illegally?

The new worker program for Hispanics in America...Why reward those who break the law? Those people should've been caught up in a conflict at the border. Anyone who forcibly enters a country by tearing down a wall should be engaged by military forces of the invaded country. Invading a country like that is essentially an act of war in my opinion.

[Verv]

The border between "Gaza" and "Egypt" is fictitious. The Gazans just crossed the "Palestinian" Rafah to the "Egyptian" Rafah. Rafah is a Palestinian city on both side of the border divided by the 1979 Camp David accord. It was Egypt territory until 1967. Before that the British ruled it under the title "Palestine" but they forged that "Palestine" from land captured from the Turks. The pepole all over the place were Egyptians back than...Yes The Brits created all that mess. Until the Brits there were no "Palestinian" identity.

So do you believe that Rafah should now be all Palestinian territory?

What if the reverse was happening and the Egyptian bedouins were breaking over to the other side?

Is any group entitled to basically act that way?

But thanks for the info.

[Tonic]

Verv

So do you believe that Rafah should now be all Palestinian territory?

Verv, I also added that what we called "Palestinian" is just what the British decided after the Ottoman Empire falled. The people themselves are infact Egyptians. Complex. No I don't think the territory should be "Palestinian" i.e. handed to one of the Palestinian warlords (Fatah or Hamas), instead Gaza should be back to Egyptian rule. But Egypt as part of pan-Arab policy refuses to get it back they prefer is will screw Israel.

What if the reverse was happening and the Egyptian bedouins were breaking over to the other side?

The Egyptian Bedouins fight an economic war. They are no more Egyptian than the local "Palestinians" (means the fellahin and city dwellers.) After all the "Right of Return" and "Ethnic Cleansing" speak, the "Palestinians" in the West Bank and Gaza also worry of newcomers from the same reason. Though the newcomers in their case are "Palestinians" returnees.

Source:

Project MUSE, an online collection of scholarly journals

http://muse.jhu.edu/login?uri=/journals ... edman.html

Palestine, a Twice-promised Land? The British, the Arabs and Zionism, 1915-1920

Indiana University Press

Isaiah Friedman - Arnold Toynbee: Pro-Arab or Pro-Zionist? -

In the late forties, Toynbee acquired the reputation of being a passionate Arab protagonist and a fierce opponent of the State of Israel; by his own admission he became known as a "Western spokesman for the Arab cause." But during World War I and its aftermath, he was less than sympathetic toward the Arabs. He was greatly disturbed to note that the Syrians, contrary to assurances made by Hussein, as well as by al-Faruqi, remained loyal to Turkey and "their conscripts fought dutifully on her side . . . their leaders are too prudent and the people too peaceable to allow them for a moment to contemplate rising in arms." Early in the War, he ascertained that, in the Turkish Asiatic provinces, there was only "a veritable cockpit of nationalities so mutilated that they have never even achieved that [kind of] unity which is the essential preliminary to a national life." By 1917, when the general Arab uprising had failed to materialize, he concluded that they had no "national consciousness. There are Arabs in name who have nothing Arabic about them but their language -- most of the peasants in Syria are such . . ." This view was not unique. The official Handbook prepared in 1918 to guide the British delegates to the Peace Conference gave the following description:

The people west of the Jordan are not Arabs, but only Arab-speaking. The bulk of the population are fellahin; that is to say, agricultural workers owning land as a village community or working land for the Syrian effendi.

In the Gaza district they are mostly of Egyptian origin; elsewhere they are of the most mixed race. They have for centuries been ground down, overtaxed, and bullied by the Turk, and still more by the Arab-speaking Turkish minor official and the Syrian and Levantine landowner.

Foreign Office Peace Handbook, No. 60, Syria and Palestine, (HMSO, l920). It was probably prepared by Ormsby-Gore, who, during his service on the Arab Bureau in Cairo, was gathering information on Syria and Palestine.

In his Survey of International Affairs for 19256 -- by then he was Director of the Institute of International Affairs (Chatham House) -- he confirmed that, although there was "a solidarity of feeling between the Sunnis on both sides of the new Syro- Palestinian frontier," and that "Arabic was the vernacular language of all inhabitants of Syria ... the common use of Arabic did not carry with it a corresponding sense of national solidarity... Communal particularism remained .. . the dominant feature in the political life of the country."

Google Books Library Project

books.google.com/

[dannymu]

Anyone who forcibly enters a country by tearing down a wall should be engaged by military forces of the invaded country. Invading a country like that is essentially an act of war in my opinion.

True. Unfortunately the Egyptian government is scared of Islamic terrorists so does not act decisively to stop the flood of Palestinians. They think that appeasing the terrorists will bring security to Egypt...

I guess the Palestinians would not have courage to do the same in Israel ie break a wall between Israel and the Palestinian territories and then flood into Israel.....

[Verv]

Really awesome information, thanks for the post, Tonic.

I am going to save your post for future awesome.

[Tonic]

Verv, one of the recent Pew Survey (Pew Global Attitudes Survey 2007) shows "49% of Palestinians say immigration is a "very big problem". Who are the immigrants they are thinking of? Israeli settlers? No, they were asked about "people who return". So why blame the improvished Bedouins?





One of first action Hamas gov made after its takeover of Gaza was to kick out the Palestinians who came from Tunis after Oslo accord, and destroyed their villas. Thats only prove the British inteligence from 1920 "in the Turkish Asiatic provinces, there was only "a veritable cockpit of nationalities so mutilated that they have never even achieved that [kind of] unity which is the essential preliminary to a national life." although there was "a solidarity of feeling between the Sunnis on both sides of the new Syro- Palestinian frontier," and that "Arabic was the vernacular language of all inhabitants of Syria ... the common use of Arabic did not carry with it a corresponding sense of national solidarity... Communal particularism remained .. . the dominant feature in the political life of the country."


As for Gaza, Egypt has civil constitutions that can govern that place, unlike the warlords they have today. The Palestinians never had a central power, legislation, or code of conduct. The only "Arab Palestinian" Government ever declared in history (on paper) was "the All-Palestine Government", which was set up by the first Palestinian National Council on 1 Oct. 1948 in Gaza and which declared an independent Palestinian state in all of Palestine, with Jerusalem as its capital and Haj Amin al-Husseini as its President (the government was annulled by Egypt in 1959).