The Egyptian Apartheid Wall

This makes the apartheid we endured in South Africa look like a 'sunday picnic'.

A Palestinian man sits on the ruins of a concrete wall that used to separate Egyptian Rafah with the southern Gaza Strip, January 2008. Egypt has started building a three-metre (10 foot)-high concrete wall along its border with the Gaza Strip in a bid to prevent a repetition of a January breach which saw Palestinians flood into Egypt, a security official told AFP.

Comments

[James Clark]

Some would argue that Egypt and Palestine are legitimately separate countries, but that the separation between Israel and Palestine is illegitimate.

[Steve]

James,
Your point is valid. There is however a difference.

My perspective is that much of the knee jerk reaction to the Israeli barrier has nothing to do with borders and is all to do with the image value as a propaganda tool. That is why there is a focus on the concrete sections of the barrier and not the fence sections.

Israel's borders have never included WB and Gaza so why is there no legitimate separation? Is it because Israel occupies/d the WB?

Well, Egypt occupied the Gaza strip from 1948 to 1967. So why is there a legitimate separation between Egypt and Gaza. They have more in common with the Gazans than the Israelis do.

I believe it has nothing to do with legitimacy but everything to do with a will to force Israel to expand her borders in order to swallow up a population that will changer her demographic make-up.

Remember the bantustans in SA were created by design of the SA govt.

The separation between Israel and the Palestinians was created by a UN resolution.

[Mediocrates]

Nonsense, in the run up to this recent round of Gaza violence, more than 350 Palestinians were killed by one another. It's simply not politically useful for anyone to point this out. It has nothing to do with interesting academic theories of legitimacy. Egypt was thrilled to outsource their own Palestinian underclass problem in 1967 and they thrilled now to continue to assert it's Israel's problem. Is it any wonder that the 'wall' between Gaza and Egypt gets knocked down, and magically hundreds of new rockets fly into Israel?

[BLACKLISTED DICTATOR]

Steve,
I wonder whether Mubarak is also worried about Hamas liasing with the Muslim Brotherhood. Many of the latter have recently been arrested.

Just a query... if Mubarak said that Gaza could become part of Egypt how would Hamas and Israel react ?

[Steve]

I believe that Israel would be very happy. Can you think of reasons why Israel would not like the idea?

Of course theer are hundreds of reasons why Mubarak would never do it. But say the Muslim brotherhood overthrough him. Perhaps they would incorporate a Hamas controlled Gaza into Egypt. But then Israel would have reasons to use military force to stop it from happenng because as you say, the Hamas are basically a specialisation of the Muslim Brotherhood.