Finally a little piece of good news.
Egypt opens Rafah border crossing with Gaza
AFP – Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak on Tuesday ordered the opening of the Rafah border crossing to allow humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip, the official MENA agency reported.
Egypt opens Gaza border after Israel ship clash
GAZA, June 1 (Reuters) – Egypt opened its border with the Gaza Strip on Tuesday, letting Palestinians cross until further notice amid a storm of international criticism of Israel’s blockade of the enclave, officials in Egypt and Gaza said.
Mubarak has been a loyal lapdog to US and Israeli interests and has been handsomely rewarded with extensive economic aid.
But the pressure cooker which is the Egyptian population would not accept anything less. The atrocities have become to blatant.
No time to hash this diary out any further – real work interfering.
A slightly more expansive article from the Hindu Times:
Sorry – forgot linkage:
Egypt opens crossing with Gaza to allow humanitarian aid
That is good news. A little bit of compassion goes a long way.
Compassion has nothing to do with it. It is pure political survival that drives people like Mubarak.
See, Bibi’s clear eyed realpolitik is paying off already. Maybe the Israeli government should take a tip from Bremmer and dress in suits and combat boots.
“Mubarak has been a loyal lapdog to US and Israeli interests and has been handsomely rewarded with extensive economic aid.“
Very little of which has been used to benefit a deeply and broadly impoverished Egyptian population or to provide decent infrastructure or services. Cairo, embarrassingly, remains a filthy, trash-littered city. You’d think some of the money could be used to hire some of its uneducated, unskilled people and pay them at least a subsistence wage to clean the trash off the streets if only to impress the tourists.
FYI, I am hearing from some sources that the “opening” of the Rafah border crossing is only partial, and is subject to the usual Israeli restrictions on what and who and cannot cross. Therefore, it is possibly nothing more than a P.R. move ordered by Israel and the U.S. to soften the outrage over Israel’s latest public crimes, and the blockade. So, it sounds as if Mubarak may not be defying anyone, but rather following his imperial masters’ orders as usual.
I’m not presenting this as established fact, at least not yet, but this is what I am hearing, and it is plausible.
“Egypt summoned the Israeli ambassador in Cairo to express their condemnation of the attack that left at least 10 people killed.“
He should have booted the guy’s ass back to Tel Aviv – through the Rafah crossing.
Ok, this article probably needs some vetting, but it does bring up an interesting question … is Israel so hot for Gaza territory only for settlement? Or would it make more sense if there were some oil or other resources that might motivate the land grab?
Natural gas. Lots of natural gas.