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Collective punishment flops

While Egypt has resealed its border with the Gaza Strip, little headway has been made towards resolving the political and humanitarian crises that led Hamas to breach the barriers in the first place. The Islamist movement blew up portions of the border wall on January 23 to provide their hard-pressed compatriots access to food, fuel, medicine, and other essentials. The immediate provocation was Israel’s decision to close the Eretz and Karni crossing points to the Gaza Strip. The Zionist state imposed this collective punishment even though there was little chance that such pressure would induce the people of Gaza to turn on Hamas and make it clamp down on militants who fire rockets into southern Israeli towns virtually every day. With essential supplies dwindling rapidly, the people in the enclave welcomed the chance to cross over to Egypt and re-stock. Cairo was taken by surprise but it responded in a constructive way by allowing the two-way traffic to continue for 11 days so that the Gazans could obtain enough supplies to last them for quite a while. The whole cycle could be repeated if the underlying problems are left unresolved. The situation could deteriorate sharply if Hamas follows through on its threat to blow up the Eretz and Karni control posts or barriers adjacent to them if another attempt is made to seal the Gaza Strip.

Egypt’s President Hosni Mubarak has invited the leaders of Fatah and Hamas for talks on establishing new border control arrangements. Mr. Mubarak favours a mechanism that will be operated jointly by the two Palestinian organisations with help from monitors assigned by the European Union. Fatah and Israel are unwilling to accept such an arrangement since they believe that it would amount to de facto recognition of Hamas’s right to control borders. Israel fears the Islamists will bring arms and ammunition into the Gaza Strip if they have any say in border management. Fatah insists that border control and other issues touching on sovereignty are exclusively within the domain of the Palestinian Authority President, Mahmoud Abbas. Even if Egypt were to allow Mr. Abbas’s men to transit through its territories to take up positions along the border, they will not be able to function without the cooperation of Hamas, since Gaza is under its control. This whole sorry mess has come about because Israel, Fatah, and the international community refused to come to terms with the victory of the Islamists in the 2006 parliamentary elections. The Gaza human crisis is a reminder that a change in mindset is overdue.

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