Hosni Mubarak’s fall has been widely feared as providing an opportunity for the anti-West Muslim Brotherhood to turn Egypt into a foothold of radical Islam, but a far graver threat could emerge in the very near future — hostile joint Palestinian and Egyptian organization, which today materialized as opposition to the Egyptian embargo on the Gaza Strip that helps keeps weapons out of terrorists’ hands.
The Gazans and Egyptians are apparently planning to storm the Rafah border crossing between the Gaza Strip and Egypt.
According to a tweet from one Gaza activist:
“We are creating a facebook page for a joint Egyptian-Palestinian march to the Rafah Crossing next month. More news soon.”
The Rafah border crossing is key to preventing arms from reaching Hamas. The crossing was overrun in 2008, providing unfettered access between Gaza and the Sinai peninsula, before the Egyptian government regained control. Since the flotilla incident last year, the Rafah crossing has been opened, albeit heavily regulated and allowing minimal transactions between the two areas. Without restrictions on the crossing, Iran could smuggle weapons easily into Gaza, instead of using make-shift tunnels that are often bombed by Israel.
The real threat to Israel here is not the potential opening of Rafah that would allow more weapons into Hamas’ hands– it’s the extent of cooperation possible between the Egyptians and the Palestinians, and whether they use this opportunity to target Israel. Does this march represent the only cooperation between the two people? Probably not. What will the second, third and fourth priorities for cooperation entail? Bringing democracy to the Middle East — unlikely. Instead, the Palestinians and Egyptians could soon focus their attention not on the Egyptian government, but on Israel. A joint Egypt-Palestinian force could storm Israeli border crossings or launch coordinated strikes on Israeli locations, even without the Muslim Brotherhood officially taking over Egypt. Those activities, based on grassroots organizing, could provoke an all-out war on Gaza, Sinai and southern Israel.
However, that worst case scenarios is no guarantee. Palestinian-Egyptian cooperation could help both people and the Middle East as a whole. The two groups could focus on developing the economy, leveraging their resources to turn the slums of Gaza into a thriving Palestinian state. Gaza had a thriving flower and fruit export industry, for example, before the embargo. The reinvigoration of those industries would employ Gazans, help develop the fledgling territory, and provide Palestinians with ownership over the land. Egyptians in the Sinai could help provide Gazan markets with access to the world, getting both people further involved with the West.
How the Gazas and Egyptians cooperate remains to be seen, but the real threat could eventually be grassroots cooperation to topple their enemies, which at this point include the Egyptian and Israeli governments alike, not to mention the West as a whole.
