More reflections on Gaza

A Palestinian smiles as he returns to Gaza with his new motorcycle, bought in Egypt, at the border between Egypt and Gaza, in Rafah, southern Gaza Strip, Friday, Jan. 25, 2008.
(AP Photo/Lefteris Pitarakis)

Poverty-Stricken Gazans Spent $130 Million in Egypt in Two Days

Rami Abdou, an economic analyst, estimated that Gazans spent $130 million in less than two days, a princely sum for the poverty-stricken territory.
(AP)

A Farewell to Gaza? -Editorial

What some see as a problem may also be an opportunity because it could be a first step in getting the world to perceive that many 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 visited.

Rather than forcing the Gazan Arabs to join with the West Bank Arabs into a state of "Palestine" that has never existed, 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.

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.
(New York Sun)


Gaza into Egypt -Martin Kramer

There were 350,000 Palestinians in Gaza in 1967. Now there are 1.3 million, who are pushing against the envelope of Gaza's narrow borders with growing force. Israel has the power and the resolve to push back. Egypt just doesn't, which is why the envelope burst where it did.
(Middle East Strategy at Harvard)


Israel's Choices in the Face of Rocket Attacks -Con Coughlin

Given that the Palestinians are in no position to rein in Hamas' excesses, it seems almost inevitable that it will fall to Israel to deal with the existential threat the terror group poses. To make peace in the Middle East, it is often necessary first to make war.
(Telegraph-UK)


Deep Inside the Plucky Country -Greg Sheridan

Israel is constantly urged to go back to its 1967 borders, but the two places where it has done that, in southern Lebanon and Gaza, the result has been disastrous. It was subject to thousands of rocket attacks from southern Lebanon and now every day Kassam rockets are fired from Gaza at nearby Israeli civilian towns, especially Sderot.
(The Australian)