The Arab Blockade of Gaza

[Valin]

Via Meadia:

Walter Russell Mead

Feb. 15 2015

 

Six months later, Gaza has little hope of recovering from last summer’s war, reports the Washington Post:

 

 

Reconstruction of the tens of thousands homes damaged and destroyed in the hostilities has barely begun, almost six months after the cease-fire. At current rates, it will take decades to rebuild what was destroyed.

 

(Snip)

 

 

While Hamas and its dwindling band of supporters try to put the blame for everything on Israel, the reality is that the major Arab governments have united to break the Muslim Brotherhood-linked group. Egypt has cracked down ferociously on its side of the border, and the Gulf sheikdoms make large pledges but don’t honor them. Inside the Gaza strip, life is becoming more nightmarish than ever, and groups even more radical than Hamas are trying to provoke a new round of war with the Israelis.

 

(Snip)

 

Israelis say, and they are right to say so, that the world unfairly singles the Jewish state out as the sole and unique author of Gaza’s sorrow. This is true, and while Israel bears some share of responsibility, so do the Arabs, the Palestinian leadership, the UN, and the great powers. Many cooks worked together to spoil this broth. Turkey’s Erdogan, who urges Hamas along a destructive and dead-end path from the safety of his magnificent palace, is more guilty of the suffering of Gaza than the Israeli and Egyptian soldiers guarding the border crossings. The hate-filled preachers spewing bile in the mosques are as responsible as the donors who welsh on their pledges.

 

(Snip)

 

[Valin]

From The Comments

 

Curious Mayhem • 2 hours ago

 

The main responsibility for Gaza rests with Hamas, of course. But Gaza is not a sovereign -- it has no real government. It's a population being held hostage by a "sub-state" actor that uses Gaza as a platform.

 

Gaza did have a half-baked sovereign, the PA, before 2007. After the Israelis withdrew from Gaza in 2005, Bush and the EU, in their infinite wisdom, decided that Gaza should have elections, in 2007. The PA was viewed as so corrupt that the majority voted for Hamas, as so often happens when you have radical Islamic parties around. Hamas never acted as a real government, but immediately kicked the PA out and began setting up rockets, mortars, tunnels, and so on, importing weapons and money from Iran. The rest is history, and needless to say, there have been no elections since. (Hamas is Sunni, opposed to Assad and his Iranian allies, and is now sponsored by Qatar and Turkey, mainly.)

 

It's a sad and depressing situation. Under the Israeli partial blockade, food and medicine were let in. The Arab blockade is tougher and designed to force Hamas out of power, something the Israelis never even considered attempting (for one thing, they're scared of who might replace Hamas). Egypt and Saudi Arabia have said that they want reconstruction in Gaza, but only conditional on demilitarization, which is reasonable. In fact, not much reconstruction can happen without demilitarization. It's not like Lebanon -- in spite of Hizbollah, Lebanon did recover from the 2006 war.

 

The Egyptian government has no time for Hamas, which they correctly view as an ally of the Muslim Brotherhood that they removed from power. The Egyptian government has sealed the Hamas-built smuggling tunnels on their side. Spin-off factions from Hamas seem to be moving into the direction of alliance with ISIS, which scares the daylights out of both Egypt and Saudi Arabia -- ISIS has the same sponsors as Hamas, Qatar and Turkey. These factions have overrun parts of Sinai.

 

All that ingenuity, devoted to mayhem and death.

 

 

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Could not have put it better.