The Egyptian army is actively locating and destroying underground tunnels that link Gaza and Egypt. This, especially so after the kidnapping of seven soldiers, who were later freed by unknown Sinai militants. According to Egypt Independent newspaper, 23 entrances to such tunnels were found last month.
The fate of the tunnels is likely to be similar to that of hundreds of other tunnels destroyed by Egyptian authorities using different tactics, including flooding them with sewage water.
This action, according to an army statement posted on Facebook, is part of “extensive efforts by border troops to secure the border of the country ... and to thwart all plots that aim to destabilise Egyptian society and national security”.
While Egypt has every right to secure its border as chaos reigns in Sinai and in other parts of the country, the already suffering Palestinian population in Gaza cannot be punished for Egypt’s own turmoil. The Israeli siege imposed on the Gaza Strip, with full backing from Egypt’s former dictator Hosni Mubarak, has wreaked havoc on Gaza’s economy and has had serious humanitarian consequences.
The Gaza Strip is a tiny stretch of land — 360 square kilometres — but is home to 1.7 million people. Gaza’s poverty is a combined result of a protracted Israeli occupation that started in 1967 and a suffocating siege imposed in 2007. The situation there is so unbearable that the United Nations mission in Gaza issued a report on August 27 last year, doubting that the strip would ever be a “liveable place” in 2020.
However, considering that Gaza has a 12km-long border with Egypt, the Israeli siege does not have to be so harsh. However, while Egypt continues to destroy tunnels, it is yet to provide an alternative lifeline to Palestinians in the poverty-stricken place.
Many Egyptians are also suffering. Since the Egyptian revolt started more than two years ago, the country remains hostage to a barefaced power struggle with many destructive implications that have polarised society in unprecedented ways. And while in Egypt itself nothing is sacred and no one is safe from the massive campaigns of defamation, demonisation and sheer lies that each political camp is hurling at the other, Palestinians find themselves in a most precarious position.
Palestinians in the Gaza Strip in particular are heavily dependent on their Egyptian neighbours. Six years of an Israeli siege, originally imposed to punish Palestinians for electing Hamas, has culminated into a drama with international dimensions. This drama of course involved the Palestinians, but also Israel’s traditional benefactors — led, as always, by the US — Arab countries, Iran, Turkey and others. Apart from the vicious nature of a siege imposed to punish a civilian population for making democratic choices, the siege has morphed to acquire multiple meanings. On one hand, it has further cemented the division of Palestinian political elites, as the Ramallah-based Palestinian National Authority (PNA) invested in ensuring the isolation of its Hamas political opponents. Notably, this took place after their brief but bloody encounters in Gaza in 2007. On the other hand, the siege positioned Hamas, whose survival was at stake, forcefully in a regional camp that involved Iran, Syria and the Lebanese resistance group Hezbollah.
The last development in particular was exploited by Israel in every way possible and certainly without much context. It subsequently attacked Gaza at will, killing and wounding thousands in the course of a few years, in the name of fighting Middle Eastern radicals hell-bent on erasing Israel off the map. Now, the Israeli media is trying to understand how sectarian rivalry in the region is factoring in as far as Gaza’s political loyalty.
In an article in the Jerusalem Post on May 3, Yaakov Lappin contended that “Sunni Egypt” is winning the “power struggle over Gaza against Shiite Iran”. It is an eerie notion to think that Gazans, already held hostage to many political calculations, are now pushed into a destructive sectarian power struggle that will surely benefit no other party but Israel.
Even if unwillingly, Palestinians in Gaza often find themselves playing a role in such regional conflicts. Under Mubarak, Egypt served as a buffer zone for Israel and the US to isolate Hamas from the rest of the world. By tightening the noose, the Egyptian regime at the time had hoped to strengthen its role as a major player in the US-Arab camp of “moderates”, in exchange for financial and political perks.
Following a lethal Israeli war on Gaza in 2008-09, known by its Israeli name Operation Cast Lead, Egypt moved even closer to the Israeli position of choking Gaza. Gazans did not expect Mubarak to allow the seriously damaged place to completely recover from a one-sided war that killed more than 1,400 people, wounded thousands more and damaged much of the place’s barely subsisting infrastructure. However, they did hope that Mubarak would open the border crossing on a more predictable basis. Yet, they watched in dismay as western security experts flocked to Egypt to fortify the Gaza border even further, even before all of Gaza’s victims were accounted for.
While many in Egypt fully understand that finding a dignified and lasting resolution to the humiliation experienced by Palestinians in Gaza is a must, some media pundits are callously fanning the flames against the Gaza population and their government. They might have forgotten that it were Gazans who led the celebration of Egypt’s January 25 Revolution and it was their resistance that kept the Israeli army at bay all of these years. Back then, no one truly knew what sort of political outcome the revolution would usher in. Most Palestinians seemed joyful that Egyptians were breathing the air of freedom and truly believed that what was good for Egypt was equally good for Palestine.
It is only obvious that neither Gazans nor their government have any vested interest in destabilising Egypt. Palestinians understand that a strong, stable Egypt will have to immediately tend to some unfinished business, one being the Gaza siege and the other is balancing out Israel’s untamed military arrogance in that area. Yes, Gaza has its religious zealots like any other place, but conflating that with a Hamas-Muslim Brotherhood plot to undermine the army’s presence in Sinai is another unsubstantiated claim aimed solely at fomenting hate against Palestinians.
Palestinians in Gaza feel humiliated and are deeply frustrated for paying the price of Egypt’s protracted political turmoil. It is time that the Muslim Brotherhood government of Mohammad Mursi does some serious soul-searching and understands that Palestinians will continue to dig tunnels to survive if Cairo does not reach an agreement with the Gaza government that will allow for commercial exchange and humanitarian relief.
Ramzy Baroud is a widely published and translated author. He is an internationally-syndicated columnist and the editor of PalestineChronicle.com. His latest book is My Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza’s Untold Story (Pluto Press, London).
