Monday, December 24, 2012

Bye-Bye Gaza?

A better idea?


After the [1967] war, Egypt kept demanding the liberation of its occupied territories, by which it meant Sinai and the Gaza Strip. This demand lasted for years until late President Anwar Sadat gave up Gaza in the Camp David treaty and left the Palestinians to negotiate it return. 
Sadat made a mistake when he abandoned a territory that had for decades been under Egyptian rule...
...The annexation of Gaza to Egypt will not be in violation of peace treaties or the Arab initiative, but will rather be the only outlet for Gazans who will then be under Egypt’s protection. 

And there's this consideration:-

...neither the United States nor Israel would object to the annexation and the same applies to the United Nations, since this is a domestic matter and the people of Gaza have the right to self-determination. In fact, Israel would like to see this happen to get rid of the threat posed by militias in the strip and to guarantee that no further attacks will be launched from there. 
There is also a geographical factor involved. It is almost impossible for Gaza and the West Bank to be united when they are separated by Israeli land in the middle. How then can they form one homeland? Would Israel open its borders for Palestinians to move freely from Gaza to the West Bank and vice versa? Or will a 57-kilometer long tunnel be dug between both, as Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barack once proposed? Or do we expect the Israeli authorities to give Palestinians land that connects Gaza to the West Bank? It is, therefore, extremely far-fetched to create a unified territory of two lands separated by more than 60 kilometers. 

Abbas, have anything to say?

^

1 comment:

mrzee said...

I'm impressed that the author referred to Sinai as "occupied". Not many people remember that it wasn't Egyptian territory any more than Gaza was.