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U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken traveled to Israel and has pledged U.S. support as the Israeli military bombards Hamas-ruled Gaza with airstrikes, and is preparing for a possible ground invasion. Hamas jihadis have fired thousands of rockets into Israel, and continue to do so. Egypt has now committed to providing humanitarian aid, but it has shut down its border to Palestinian refugees from Gaza. Israel also currently refuses to allow goods to enter Gaza “until around 150 hostages taken captive by Hamas during a weekend attack are freed.” 2.3 million people are now blockaded between Israel and Egypt. The bottom line is that while Egypt is willing to serve as a mediator and even to advance the view that Israel return to pre-1967 borders, its president, Abdel Fatah El-Sisi, is committed to his own country’s security interests. Egypt fears what Gazans may bring into Egypt if it opens its borders.
As result of the high level of terrorist activity and threat among Palestinians over the decades, Egypt is shutting down the only other escape route from Gaza besides Israel—the Rafah crossing. According to Reuters:
Egypt has long restricted the flow of Gazans on to its territory, even during the fiercest conflicts. Cairo, a frequent mediator between Israel and the Palestinians, always insists the two sides resolve conflicts within their borders, saying this the only way Palestinians can secure their right to statehood.
Gaza is saturated with jihadists, and Palestinians are now facing the ruins of a war that was started by Hamas — the jihadist group that Palestinians themselves chose to rule Gaza — an area also dominated by Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Both groups have worked hard to stir Palestinian zeal, even on a global level. Hamas is also supported by the global Muslim Brotherhood and Hizballah, which has been warned by America and Western allies to stay out of the war. Fatah, meanwhile, has praised Hamas and vowed to expand the war to Judea and Samaria. Iran is the chief funder and eternal instigator of all this. To further complicate matters, ISIS flags were discovered on the bodies of Hamas jihad terrorists in Kibbutz Sufa after its attack on that community.
Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi has stated that “guarding Egypt’s national security is his top responsibility, and there will be no compromise or complacency under any circumstances.”
Most Palestinians collectively ascribe to the jihadist obliteration of Israel: two-thirds of Palestinians actually believe that Israel would not exist in 25 years. Aside from children, they are not victims of their leadership; nor are they innocent bystanders. Palestinians, Hamas and other jihad terror groups work in synergy. One can observe the strength of the Palestinian “resistance,” which has even won acceptance at the highest levels of American politics. The mainstreaming of the Palestinian cause is apparent in protests across North America, as multitudes of demonstrators cheer on the savagery of Hamas. Palestinians are heavily indoctrinated from early childhood to hate Jews, and are even motivated toward martyrdom. They are indoctrinated at jihad summer camps, and are continuously exposed to antisemitic school curricula.
HAMAS is the Arabic acronym for the Islamic Resistance Movement. Hamas leaders “see themselves as a ‘resistance’ organization, and they worry that if they lay down their arms, they will be outflanked by more radical factions within the Palestinian community and, like Fatah before them, lose their credibility among ordinary Palestinians.”
The Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research found “a dramatic surge in Palestinian support for Hamas” following the Gaza war of 2021, when Hamas attacked Israel with rocket fire, and Israel responded with Operation Guardian of the Walls. According to the Associated Press, the Palestinians viewed Hamas as “victors in a battle against Israel to defend Jerusalem and its holy sites.”
The Palestinians gave Hamas reason to intensify its “resistance,” and Hamas rose to the challenge, committing unimaginable atrocities against women, elderly people and even infants, who were beheaded along with IDF soldiers. Now Hamas is calling on Gazans to be human shields:
Hamas’ Interior Ministry: “We again call on [Gazan] citizens not to cooperate with the recorded phone messages that the occupation (i.e., Israel) is sending at random, asking people to leave their homes”
Again Hamas proves that its “resistance” is worth more than Palestinian lives, and the group may get its wish one way or another.
What brought El-Sisi to this point began with the turbulence that resulted in the 2013 military coup against Muslim Brotherhood leader Mohamed Morsi, along with his party. The Muslim Brotherhood, which is outlawed in Egypt, was an ideological ally of Hamas (an offshoot of the Brotherhood). Tensions flared when el-Sisi took a tough stance against Hamas “and ordered the destruction of a network of smuggling tunnels that had sustained Gaza’s economy.” Egypt also “retrospectively accused” Hamas of involvement in its 2011 revolution.
Although Egypt largely relaxed its border controls in 2018, and has improved its relations with Hamas over time, terrorism concerns persist. This is clear from Egypt’s latest decision to lock out Gazans. A further reason for Egypt’s reluctance to open its border to Gaza is that Sinai has seen ongoing of jihad fighting for over a decade. Egypt’s military has in recent years largely succeeded in asserting its control over northern Sinai, but the area still faces sporadic attacks.
Palestinians are now stuck in Gaza. As Egypt moves to protect its own interests, it will continue to exert strenuous efforts for an Israeli ceasefire. As the war continues, Egypt must balance its own interests with key players on both sides of the fence. On one side is the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), which has fully embraced its “brothers” of “Palestine”; and on the other, is Israel and its Western allies; El-Sisi has in the past bent over backwards to prove himself “moderate.” Egypt’s desire to see a ceasefire will become more urgent in times ahead, as it has shut down the one route that could give Palestinians a respite, in a war where Israel’s new unity government has formed a war cabinet and vows to “crush Hamas.”
Excellent article. One thing it omits is that the Muslim Brotherhood’s candidate Morsi won that election because, after Mubarak was overthrown, the Obama administration pressed for early elections which guaranteed a victory for the Muslim Brotherhood candidate. The Brotherhood was the only party sufficient organized to compete in these elections and was virtually guaranteed to win. The other, newly-formed, parties wanted later elections in which they would likely be more competitive. It tells you a lot that the Obama administration, as delusional and arrogant as it was on the Middle East (see, also, Iran, Libya), actively worked to assure a Morsi (i.e., Muslim Brotherhood) victory in the largest Arab nation.
Gee, I almost forgot to mention that the Muslim Brotherhood was founded by Hasan al-Bana in the late 1920s. He was an admirer of, and correspondent with, Adolph Hitler.
I’m surprised that a Muslim nation like Egypt would treat fellow Muslims from Gaza this way. Aren’t they violating the Islam religion by not providing shelter for women and children from the Gaza Strip? What about the other Muslim nations as well? Why aren’t they providing shelter, food, and medical care for their fellow Muslims? They may all be Muslims, but maybe there is still tribal racism involved here.
I noticed that in Europe some of these Muslims get involved in fight with each others. Maybe Egyptians don’t like Palestinians. Syrians don’t like Turks. Iraqis don’t like Syrians. That goes for other ethnic groups who call themselves Muslims, followers of the Islam religion.
Would you knowingly allow a cancer into your body? That’s what you are suggesting that Egypt should do.
Kasandra:
I don’t think women and children would be a burden to the Egyptian government on a short term basis.
They love death more than they love life. In essence and fundamentally every Muslim is expendable, after all, when they die life goes on in Paradise, so death here on earth isn’t really the end of life, it’s not really death. The more you truly believe in life after death and that that life is vastly superior to this life on earth, the more you will discount this life as ultimately unimportant compared to eternity in Heaven or Paradise.
“Kill them all; God will know His own”
Amalric’s own version of the siege, described in his letter to Pope Innocent in August 1209, states:
Indeed, because there is no strength nor is there cunning against God, while discussions were still going on with the barons about the release of those in the city who were deemed to be Catholics, the servants and other persons of low rank and unarmed attacked the city without waiting for orders from their leaders. To our amazement, crying “to arms, to arms!”, within the space of two or three hours they crossed the ditches and the walls and Béziers was taken. Our men spared no one, irrespective of rank, sex or age, and put to the sword almost 20,000 people. After this great slaughter the whole city was despoiled and burnt, as divine vengeance miraculously raged against it.
About 20 years later, Caesarius of Heisterbach relates this story about the massacre:
When they discovered, from the admissions of some of them, that there were Catholics mingled with the heretics they said to the abbot “Sir, what shall we do, for we cannot distinguish between the faithful and the heretics.” The abbot, like the others, was afraid that many, in fear of death, would pretend to be Catholics, and after their departure, would return to their heresy, and is said to have replied “Caedite eos. Novit enim Dominus qui sunt eius – Kill them all for the Lord knoweth them that are His” (2 Tim. ii. 19) and so countless number in that town were slain.” – Massacre at Beziers, Wikipedia
Once again TLDR. And 1209? Really? Do you ever live in the present? And can you please stop trying to impress us with all of your useless knowledge?
Get a life.
If you would care to explain how an ancient crusade against Catholic heretics is in any way relevant to hamass holding Gaza hostage while the world’s compromised far left supports hamass, I would be willing to read your tortured prose.
You’re a little naive – moslems don’t seem to care about other moslems – unless a Jew is involved. China is BRUTAL to its moslem population, but not a peep form the islamic world
It may be thought of as self-preservation.
Let in contagion, suffer illness and maybe death.
What other ME nation has offered them land? Ans: Not one. And for the same reason as Egypt.
They are a unique subspecies of modern humans who only value death.
Hence, be charitable and help them achieve it. They have now chosen the time.
Egypt should do this but has its own problems of poverty. Lets be clear, the Arabs living in Gaza are being used by other Arabic and Muslim nations to be canon fodder to fight a proxy way. They dont care what happens to the citizens of Gaza. I feel sorry for the Gazan people but their leaders choose to get in bed with a spirit of terrorism from the first year they were ceeded over the territory from Israel in 2005. They immediately began campaigns of rocket launchings, tunnel diggings etc. The Gazan people need to figure out a way to gather up the terrorists and turn them over to some brokered or mediated International authority or Egypt in order to turn off the siege machine. Gazan people need to remove terror from their state governance.
You make it sound as though the Gazan people do not willingly support Hamas. They’ve had 18 years to dispatch them if that were the case. They haven’t and won’t even if it means they die in the streets filling the role of human shields.
Are there bible verses about Israels’ enemies being confounded and fighting with each other? In any event it sure looks like they are.
89 billion in modern military hardware left in Afghanistan. (Where is it being used?) Will a 3rd world war be created so the One World Government can take place and drag Iran and turkey…Erdogan into it? Even President Al Sisi won’t take in the Palestinian refugees through Egypt’s borders, but now we’re going to let them into the US? Boy have we been sold out.
Even their own want nothing to do with them. Says a lat in my opinion.