Ramzy Baroud ARABNEWS
Tuesday 9 April 2013
On Sept. 17, 2012, Ismail Haniyeh, the prime minister of the Hamas government in Gaza, made another appeal to his Egyptian counterpart Hisham Kandil to consider setting up a free trade area between Gaza and Egypt.
The reasonable idea would allow Egypt to support Gaza’s battered economy while sparing Cairo the political fallout from destroying hundreds of tunnels that provide 1.6 million Palestinians a lifeline under a continued Israeli siege. Palestinians in Gaza rely on goods smuggled through tunnels and to a lesser extent United Nations handouts to survive.
“We explained the concept in detail (…) the idea is to alleviate the economic hardship in Gaza,” Hamas official, Taher Al-Nono was quoted saying to Reuters. Kandil promised to look into the matter, indicating that it was too early for a response.
However this proposal was introduced before and repeatedly after the September meeting. It should have at least served as the basis for a serious platform of discussion regarding future cooperation between Gaza and Egypt on this urgent matter. But Cairo neither responded nor offered an alternative to end Gaza’s seemingly perpetual misery. Even worse, for several months now and notably since the deadly Aug. 5 attack in Sinai by unknown assailants — which killed 16 Egyptian border guards — the Egyptian Army has actively been destroying Gaza’s tunnels.
According to a Gaza-based economist Maher Al-Tabbaa, “30 percent of Gaza’s goods come from the tunnels.” But other estimates, cited by Reuters, place the food reliance on smuggling at 80 percent. Without tunnels, and no real, long-term alterative, Gaza will descend deeper into poverty and the crisis will likely reach unprecedented levels.
But why is post-revolution Egypt maintaining the very policy of isolating Gaza that was first espoused by former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak?
Despite grave humanitarian repercussions of the siege, the subject is essentially political. Following the demise of the Mubarak regime, a sense of euphoria was felt in Gaza and across the region that a revolutionary government — especially one headed by the Muslim Brotherhood — is likely to reverse an enriched legacy, financed and guarded by American money and political leverage. The price of the Camp David treaty signed between Egypt and Israel in 1978-79 was meant to turn Egypt into a permanent political asset for Washington and Tel Aviv in exchange for a fixed amount of money that arrives mostly in the form of military aid. Mubarak had indeed delivered and the late Egyptian intelligence chief Omar Suleiman was the personification of that American success.
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