From Egypt to Gaza

We are all Egyptians today, I tweeted breathlessly from the celebrations at Yonge-Dundas Square, Saturday afternoon.

But by evening, sitting at a Canadian Boat for Gaza funder at the Bloor St. United Church, I was definitely North American Jewish and in "not in my name" mode once again.

Organizers of the benefit couldn’t have known their meeting would follow fateful happenings, and they were smart enough to let the giddy Egypt optimism infiltrate normally grim discussions of battered Gaza.

The new (temporary?) Egyptian regime, has, no surprise, already re-affirmed it’s committment to the 1978 Camp David peace accord with Israel. But the big question in the pews here tonight — aside from whether the generals will allow free elections, the right of assemby and abolish emergency laws — is the Rafah crossing.

Will Egypt’s leaders, whomsoever they turn out to be, break the seige and let goods flow freely to suffering Gazans?

And, can two things be true at once — can Egypt honour the deal and open the crossing? Sort of depends on who you talk to. A few days after the meeting, I talk to Paul Michaels at the Canada Israel Committee who says that under article 3 of the 1979 peace deal which ensures security for both partners, Egypt is obligated to stop the flow of weaponry threatening to Israel from crossing its borders into Gaza.

It was a commitment updated, says Michaels, after Israel pulled out of Gaza in 2005.

But, he says, while Israel insists arms be blocked, it’s Egypt that has decided to prevent the movement of other goods. “Egypt for it’s own reasons wanted to keep that border tight Rafah,’’ he says referring to Mubarak’s quarrel with the Muslim Brotherhood and it’s Gaza expression, Hamas.

McGill political scientist Rex Brynen has a different interpretation of the origins of Egypt’s obligations. Maintaining the blockade “is the result of a side understanding between the Egyptians and the Israelis,’’ he says, and not part of the original deal. He does say, however, that there could be reasons why Egypt’s new rulers, despite mass domestic sympathy for Palestinians, might hestitate to open the floodgates.

For one thing, says Brynen, if Egypt’s government unseals the border, it has to calculate on Israel closing theirs. “Egypt is concerned about having the Gaza issue thrown into their lap; they would be the sole umbilical cord into Gaza so in time the Egyptians would become completely responsible for everything that happened in Gaza. They want Israelis responsible,’’ he says.

Back at the Bloor St. United where it’s announced that $200,000 of the $300,000 needed to sail in May has already been raised, keynote speaker Israeli activist Jeff Halper, co-founder of Israeli Committee Against Home Demolitions and a former Minnesotan, is confident the Rafah barrier is on its way to oblivion.

“The seige can’t be the seige without Egypt. I can’t believe there could be any government in Egypt that would continue the blockade. Liberating Egypt will mean liberating Gaza,’’ says the grey-bearded Halper, an anthropologist by trade, who has been serially arrested squaring off with bulldozers tearing down Palestinian homes.

But, despite his sunny post-Mubarak take, Halper can’t avoid the straight-on downers. Events in the Arab world are isolating the U.S. and forcing it to rethink it’s Israeli albatros. Still, there’s a major obstacle to changing the power dynamic, and it isn’t the Israel lobby. It’s the defence industry which will be supplying billions of dollars in military aid to the Arab world by 2014.

As to Gaza itself, I’ve heard most of the reports before, but I don’t find this particularly protective. The info still shocks. Like the story of the first flotilla in 2008 — Halper was on it — when Gazan authorities asked for 9000 pairs of hearing aids for children because the noise of the Israeli fighter planes was creating mass hearing loss. “Israel flies them low to break the sound barrier,’’ Halper says. “It breaks glass.’’

He goes on to the sewage from destroyed infrastructure, lack of electricity, the limiting of agriculture and fishing and Israel’s strict monitoring of the food allowed into the territory. The latter he calls a “scientific form of oppression’’, whereby civilians are denied a caloric content that would elevate their lives beyond survival mode.

Other groups use different nomenclature. Despite the fact Israel is allowing in a wider range of food following the catastrophic attack on the Freedom Flotilla in May 2010, Physicians for Human Rights-Israel, in a January 2011 report, still calls the policy maintaining a “humanitarian minimum.” They point out that 61% of the population, or 973,600 people, suffer from a lack of food security.

The WHO, in 2010, reported that 74 percent of children aged 9-12 months were anemic, as were 32 percent aged 7-15 years and that the majority of the water supply was unfit for human consumption.

But these gory details, Halper says, are eluding most Israelis, meaning peace activists there aren’t exactly scoring breakthroughs. “The army has inculcated a doctrine saying the Arabs are our permanent enemies and that peace is impossible, So why vote for a peace party? It all boils down to personal security. The Israeli shekel is high; people feel safe. The whole occupation has been neutralized as a issue.’’

And at the height of the Egyptian revolution, what was Israel’s big media story? The burning of an IKEA warehouse in Netanya.

“Israelis,’’ says Halper of his countryfolk, “live in a bubble.’’

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