Thread: The Egyptian Wall and Gaza blockade

Egypt constructs huge Gaza wall

Hamas expresses its dismay as Egypt acts to cut Gaza's smuggling routes

By Ben Lynfield in Jerusalem

Egypt has reportedly begun building an underground iron wall along its border with the Gaza Strip in a major upgrading of its efforts to end smuggling through tunnels. Egyptian security officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, confirmed that the wall project is under way. Local residents reported Egyptian clearing work was in progress 90 metres from the border over the last three weeks.


The Egyptian project comes at the encouragement of the US. After Israel's devastating Operation Cast Lead in Gaza last winter, Washington took the lead in encouraging international efforts to stop smuggling of weaponry into the Strip through the tunnels. Israeli defence officials say that the Qassam rockets that struck Israeli targets before and during the Gaza war came from Egypt via the tunnels.

But the underground links also form a vital lifeline for the passage of everyday necessities in the face of a draconian Israeli blockade of the Strip that has at times gone so far as to bar the import of pasta into the coastal enclave.

According to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, the wall will be 9-10km long and will be sunk 20-30m into the ground. It is supposed to be impenetrable and impossible to melt. It is not expected to halt smuggling completely, but to cut hundreds of existing tunnels and force diggers to go deeper than they have gone before.

Leaders of Hamas, the Islamist movement that rules the Gaza Strip, are believed to have been greatly dismayed by Egypt's willingness to implement the project while the Israeli blockade continues and while Egypt keeps its own crossing with the Strip closed. But last night they declined to put their feelings on record, apparently wary of further antagonising Cairo, which is already angry over Hamas's refusal to sign an Egyptian-brokered national reconciliation deal with the rival Fatah movement.

But Hassan Khreisheh, an independent nationalist in the West Bank who is deputy speaker of the Palestinian Legislative Council, described the project as "a shame for the Egyptians".

"They talk of supporting the Palestinians while they co-operate with others in imposing the siege and preventing food and supplies from reaching Gaza," Mr Khreisheh said. "They are collaborating with the Americans."

Abdullah Abdullah, a legislator who supports Mahmoud Abbas, the moderate Palestinian President, voiced understanding for the Egyptian move. "We can't deny Egypt's right to protect its sovereignty and people against intrusion. At the same time we want the Egyptians not to deny the Palestinians their means of livelihood."

Egypt is wary of Hamas because it is an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, the long-established transnational movement that supports the creation of an Islamic state in Egypt and which has long been a thorn in the flesh of President Mubarak. Cairo was criticised both before and during the war for allegedly providing diplomatic cover for Israel.

Mark Regev, a spokesman for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, said: "I cannot confirm what the Egyptians are doing and not doing. But I can say over the last two months the Egyptians have been enhancing their anti-smuggling efforts. We welcome that."
Egypt constructs huge Gaza wall - Middle East, World - The Independent

This Gaza wall is now a very debated topic within the moderates and the radicals. The tunnels have been used to smuggle food, goods, and weaponary. The Gaza smugglers have put taxes on smuggled goods, like milk and rice. Egypt have been defending its soverign right to protect its borders, whereas Hamas argue that the Wall purpose is to protect Israel and starve Gaza people. They have call it "the Wall of hatred". Hezbollah Chief Nesrallah have spend hours in his Ashura day speech critiszing this wall. There are a very high criticism toward Egypt from Arab street.

I have mixed feelings. I think this wall violates internatioal law, unethical, and only would make the economic blockage and food insecurity situation in Gaza worse. It would also stop the rockets smuggling problem, but an Israeli official mentioned that Hamas have developed different weaponary. Why dont Egypt fully allow foods and goods to be transfered through borders? Egypts has its right to protect its borders, but needs a more clear border policy that define what goods are allowed to be transfered, and easy cross-border movements for Gazans, who have families and relatives across the border.

Israel is actually not punishing Hamas, it is punishing Gaza people.

Egypt is between two evils. Israel insists on Egypt to be the "borders police", and Israel actually are controling the other side of the borders, in what is called the Philadelphia road. Also, Hamas is seeking to damage Egypt's image similar to the way they embarrased egypt's gov't in 2008.


This article is publish by a pro-hamas writer in a Alquds newspaper, which is widely read in Gaza. It would give an idea on Hamas's Anti-Wall campaign toward Egypt.

The wall of hatred in Gaza

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.

Egypt not giving a shit about the Palestinians isn't really anything new.