The wall of hatred in Gaza

18 December 2009
Egypt remains silent on the news that an 18 metre deep, 11 kilometre long steel wall is being constructed on its border with the Gaza Strip. This fellow Arab country is leaving the justification of this illegal and immoral act to Jeffrey Feltman, US Assistant Secretary of state for Near Eastern Affairs.

The wall, composed of interlocking parts, has been designed and built in the US and is being constructed with the help of US army engineers. It is considered fire and bomb-proof and cannot be cut or melted. It is intended to close off the tunnels built by the besieged sons of Gaza with their own bare hands and prevent the smuggling of goods required for basic survival (food and materials for reconstructing the homes destroyed by Israeli forces) in the open air prison that is Gaza.

One and a half million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip are facing genocide by imprisonment, starvation and deprivation, carried out by the Israeli government with the backing of the US administration and the complicity of, not only the Egyptian but all, Arab leaders.

Assistant Secretary Feltman claimed that the Egyptians were entitled to build the wall since it is in their territory and reports suggest the move follows an agreement signed by Condoleezza Rice, former Secretary of State, and her then Israeli counterpart, Tzipi Livni, during the Israeli aggression on Gaza Strip late last year and early this year.

Witnesses in the town of Rafah say that work was well under way, and that half of the project has already been completed.

The Egyptian newspaper, 'The Republic', yesterday fiercely defended the construction of the wall as a 'sovereign right' exercised by Cairo to secure its borders. The newspaper claimed the move was merely strengthening the foundations of the existing wall by re-inforcing the foundations with steel plates, a method applied to skyscrapers the world over.

Using tactics honed in Nazi Germany, the Israelis are turning the Gaza Strip into a large prison camp in preparation for burning its children in the fire of a new invasion. This is at the instigation of their rabbis who issued a recent fatwa that all existing Palestinian prisoners should be slaughtered in the event of the death of soldier Gilad Shalit.

But we must not forget that this collusion is the work of the Egyptian governmen not the Egyptian people. It is designed to please the US administration and offer evidence of its willingness to participate in the 'war on terror'. But Egypt can expect nothing in return from America except more humiliation and scorn.

If the Egyptian government is hoping to exert pressure on Hamas towards reconciliation with Abbas (who has endorsed the construction of the wall) and the Palestinian Authority, the move will spectacularly backfire. This wall will ignite anger in the hearts of anyone with a conscience throughout the whole world.

How ironic it is that Arab, Muslim and Western activists in Britain succeeded in instigating a warrant for the arrest of Tzipi Livni on charges of War Crimes during the Gaza offensive whilst she is meanwhile at liberty to visit Egypt whenever she wishes without any such concerns.

The Egyptian regime, in order to portray Israel as a friend and enhance its own security and stability, wants to turn Gaza's hungry, trapped, people into the enemies of Egypt and its people. But Gazans and the legitimate Palestinian resistance have strong blood ties with the Egyptians on the other side of the border, many are closely related.

Egypt is becoming Israel's whipping boy not only against the Palestinians who are exercising their right of legitimate resistance to regain their usurped rights, but also against impoverished and desperate Africans from the South of their borders who are attempting to cross into occupied Palestine in search of asylum.

The sons of Gaza Strip can not threaten the security of Egypt and the Egyptian people respect the thousands of martyrs who gave victory to their cause, and does not want the people of Gaza surviving by smuggling and tunnels. They long to see a proper, legitimate border crossing, under Egyptian jurisdiction, a normal border like those found where two territories meet the world over.

But the Egyptian regime, instead, imposes a blockade on their neighbours and is proud to confiscate bags of cement or cans of milk, or even an aged cow on its way to the poor and landless Gazans, as happened on the occasion of Eid al-Adha.

When Palestinians stormed the Rafah wall in the uprising of hunger, in January 2008, they did not commit any wrongdoing on the other side of the border, they did not steal a single loaf of bread despite their hunger, but acted in a civilized manner. Unlike, one could add, the sons of San Francisco and Los Angeles who took to looting during the riots there.

The Egyptian regime's apparent hatred for the people of the Gaza Strip and its bias to the Israeli side is beyond comprehension. Why should it not side with its fellow Arabs, who are oppressed, beseiged and starved and who have done them no harm at all?

We are confident of two things: the Egyptian people, with their keen sense of justice, will never accept the wall of hatred and humiliation that its government is building on its border with the Gaza Strip; the second is that the sons of Gaza, with their strong instinct for survival and their decades of resistance, will not lack the resourcefulness to overcome this wall.

Those who were able to develop home-made rockets that could reach into Israel, those who took a white donkey and turned it into a zebra with stripes of black dye simply to bring a smile of joy to the lips of their children on a holiday visit to the miserable and depleted Gaza Zoo, will find their ways to breech this wall. And even if starvation takes them in this genocide they will remain standing as long as they are able, their heads held high.