Returning Gaza

Give Gaza to Egypt -Daniel Pipes

Israelis had brought themselves to this avoidable predicament through incompetence, signing bad agreements, turning Gaza over to the thug Arafat, expelling their own citizens, permitting premature elections, acquiescing to the Hamas conquest, and abandoning control of Gaza's western border.

The border breaching, ironically, offers an opportunity to clean up a mess. Washington and other capitals should declare the experiment in Gazan self-rule a failure and press President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt to help, perhaps providing Gaza with additional land or even annexing it as a province.

Among other benefits, this would (1) end the rocket fire against Israel, (2) expose the superficiality of Palestinian nationalism, and perhaps (3) break the Arab-Israeli logjam.

It's hard to divine what benefit American taxpayers have received for the 65 billion [dollars] they have lavished on Egypt since 1948; but Egypt's absorbing Gaza might justify their continuing to shell out $1.8 billion a year.
[Jerusalem Post]

The Gaza Breakout -Bret Stephens

Gaza is sovereign Hamas territory, Hamas is the Palestinian branch of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood, and Egypt - not Israel - is the country that has most to fear from a statelet that is at once the toehold, sanctuary, and springboard of an Islamist revolution.

"The situation in Sinai now poses the greatest threat to Egypt's national security," writes one perceptive Egyptian blogger.
(Wall Street Journal)