A Farewell to Gaza
Israeli and American officials were in high dudgeon yesterday over the decision by Egypt to allow tens of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, of Arabs to cross from the Gaza strip into Egypt proper. The Jerusalem Post quoted Israel's defense minister, Ehud Barak, describing the situation as a "problem," a term that was also used in a statement by Israel's foreign ministry. A State Department spokesman pronounced the American government to be "concerned" about the border crossing.
Well, let us suggest that what some see as a problem to be concerned about may also be an opportunity to be seized on, because it could be a first step in getting the world to perceive that many of the residents of Gaza are Egyptians rather than Palestinians. They'd rather be in Egypt than in Gaza, as they showed by voting with their feet these past days. They speak Egyptian Arabic. They have closer family ties to Egypt than they do to the West Bank, where many of them have never even visited.
Rather than forcing the Gazan Arabs to join with the West Bank Arabs into a state of "Palestine" that has never before existed and has few of the elements of a successful nation-state, why not let Gaza revert to its pre-1967 status as part of Egypt? Egypt, at least is a country with which Israel has a peace treaty and diplomatic relations, which is more than can be said for the Hamas terrorist organization that now controls Gaza.
Were Gaza to become an Egyptian responsibility, Israel would no longer be reduced to complaining about arms smuggling across the Gaza-Egypt border. It could hold Egypt directly responsible for the rocket attacks on the Israeli city of Sderot, and America could use its $1.8 billion a year in aid to Egypt as leverage to demand the cessation of the attacks. If the plan of letting Gaza merge into Egypt works, it could be a model for allowing Jordan, another country with which Israel has a treaty of peace, to accept responsibility for parts of the West Bank. In the crisis along the Egypt-Gaza border could lie the seeds of a just resolution to the so-called Palestinian question.
