The ouster of Mubarak last week has prompted many to opine that with a more democratic regime in Cairo, Egypt will be forced under popular pressure to open the border with Gaza, effectively ending the blockade on Gaza, imposed by Israel and Egypt since Hamas took over the strip in 2007.
L-ARISH, Egypt (Ma'an) -- Unidentified armed men on Sunday abducted three Egyptian officers patrolling the border with Israel, Egyptian security sources said.
Sources told Ma'an that three officers serving in Rafah's central security forces were kidnapped near the barbed wire fence separating Egypt and Israel about three kilometers south of the Kerem Shalom crossing, between Gaza and Egypt.
According to security officials, gunmen arrived in three vehicles without license plates and abducted the soldiers. Egyptian security in Rafah was negotiating with the kidnappers to release the officers, sources added.
Other sources speculated that the officers were kidnapped in retaliation for the killing of a drug smuggler shot dead Thursday in possession of a considerable quantity of hashish.
I for one am not convinced.
Stories like the above are evidence of the problems Egpyt could possibly face if it opens the border to Gaza. There are a lot of misconceptions about the Egypt's blockade of Gaza, and why it was put in place under Mubarak. Many people are of the opinion that Israel, through America (Israel controls the most powerful country in the world don't you know!) had ordered or pressured Mubarak into placing the blockade on Gaza for their own reasons, and counter to the interest of the Mubarak regime. Placing Israel at the heart of every issue in the Middle East, as always, misses the point entirely.
The main reason for the Egyptian blockade was not Israeli or American pressure, but for its own reasons, namely competition from the Islamists in Gaza and Egypt, and security.
It is well known that Mubarak has demonized and crushed the Islamist opposition in Egypt, and presented himself to the West as a bulwark against extremism. "It's either me of the Ikhwan" he claimed, with his hand out to the Americans for more military aid. Partly this was an invention of Mubarak's, but there was also a legitimate concern on the part of the Mubarak regime about the Islamist opposition. Mubarak fought, and won, a bloody war during the 1990s against extreme jihadist terrorist groups who sought to overthrow him and replace his regime with a pure Islamic state run in accordance with the salafi interpretation of Sharia law. He also had to fend off the non-violent, but possible more threatening, opposition in the form of the Muslim Brotherhood. He largely succeeded in doing this, as can be seen by the relatively secular crowds which ousted him last week. The Gaza blockade was part of this strategy to contain the Brotherhood. Hamas is, in its own words, the Palestinian manifestation of the Muslim Brotherhood. Isolating Hamas from Egypt, pressuring it, and not allowing the ideological infection to spread from Gaza to Egypt was clearly always going to be a pressing issue for Mubarak, whether Israel wanted him to put the blockade in place or not.
Secondly, security. Stories like the one above make it clear that there are legitimate security concerns in the Sinai and around the border with the Gaza strip. The New Years Day bombing of the Coptic Church, which left 23 people dead, has been linked back to the Gaza strip, according to Egyptian sources, and other independent sources. Whether that is true or not, there are clearly small Al Qaeda-linked groups operating from the Gaza Strip, which could pose a threat to Egyptian security, if left unchecked. Arms smuggling to and from the strip has posed a security threat to the Sinai, and has resulted in killings, kidnappings, drug running, Bedouin attacks and infastructure attacks in recent years.
So now that the "American/Israeli puppet" Mubarak has gone, and a possible democracy is emerging in Egypt, will we see the end to the blockade of Gaza?
In my view, no.
Under almost any possible scenario the Egyptian army is going to retain a very prominent place in the new system in Egypt. I don't think it's all that unlikely that the military will remain the dominant force in Egyptian political life for quite some time to come. Even if all goes to plan with the transition period, I think that the best outcome for Egypt will look something like what Turkey has had since Ataturk - a stable, relatively democratic regime with a strong and influential army establishment.
The people of Egypt almost certainly want an end to the blockade. Any punative measure taken against Gaza, or left in place against Gaza is going to be incredibly unpopular among the Egyptian people. The regime the Egyptians are going to have, however, is not going to be a pure democracy. It is going to be a compromise between democratic elements and the army. The army is much more security-minded than the Egyptian people, and much less enamoured with the plight of the Palestinians and their struggle. It is for this reason that I do not believe an end to the Egyptian blockade of Gaza is on its way. There will be a change in policy. There will have to be a compromise between the security policies pushed for by the army and the pro-Palestinian agenda of any likely democratically-elected Egyptian government, but I do not think the army is going to compromise so much on this issue that it aghrees to drop the blockade on Gaza completely, or even particularly significantly. What is much more likely to happen will be a half-way house of the army agreeing to let more humanitarian aid through the border-crossing, and allow more Palestinians out of the strip to visit Egypt, but keeping the fundamentals of the blockade in place. The politicians and the masses will grumble about it, but the army will stand firm.
Sometimes populist idealism just isn't enough to overcome hard-headed, security-orientated realism.
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