re: Dennis Prager breaks down Middle East problem in a nut shell

quote:

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I'm trying to find out why the Egyptians are locking up Palestinians in Gaza? You are avoiding the question, it's not about why the Jews and Palestinians are fighting, it's about why the Egyptians who once controlled Gaza are locking up Palestinians.

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Egypt once controlled Gaza but they signed a peace treaty with Israel in 1979 renouncing all their claims to Gaza in exchange for the return of the Sinai. They have been allies ever since. The Egyptian street sympathizes with the Palestinians but since the treaty the military leadership of Egypt, with a brief interruption during the Morsi administration, has been more or less allied with Israel.

They could open the border for immigration, but Egypt has no interest in doing that because their economy is already in the shitter and the Sinai is already a poor area of Egypt. They don't want to deal with an influx of Palestinian refugees. Especially when those refugees will be likely to sympathize with the opposition rather than the al-Sisi regime. They could open the border for trade, but sealing off Gaza suits al-Sisi as much as it does Israel. He runs a police state over there, and Hamas is affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood. Why take the risk or expense of inspecting or regulating trade when you can just cut off the border entirely? The costs of the trade-off don't accrue to him, only the benefits.

If the point you're trying to make is that Egypt shares moral culpability for the Gaza blockade, that's certainly true, although assigning blame to "Egypt" as a whole is a little more problematic than "Israel." (Dig those 2014 election results.) If the point you're trying to make is that "Gaza is Egypt," or "why don't they just go to Egypt" or some other typical "squirrel!" argument to get Israel off the hook 100%, then no, that's ignoring the historical and current politics.