الرئيسية
The Rafah crossing nightmare
On Saturday, 30 June, Taghrid Abed, 30, died while languishing in unbearable heat on the Egyptian side of the Rafah border crossing, Gaza's only gateway to the outside world. Another Palestinian had earlier died in similar circumstances as the world community, enslaved by American Zionism, stood powerless to end this disgrace.
Abed was one of more than 5000 Palestinians stranded at the border crossing for two weeks as a result of Israel's refusal to allow them back to the Strip.
Israel, which is shamelessly telling the world that it has ended its occupation of Gaza, is still in tight control of the Rafah crossing, effectively turning the entire Gaza Strip into the world's largest concentration camp.
The Rafah Crossing Protocol, reached more than two years ago between Israel and the obviously incompetent Palestinian Authority (PA), headed by Mahmoud Abbas, gave Israel a veto power over operations at the Terminal.
According to the hapless protocol, the terminal can only be opened in the presence of European monitors. However, the Israeli army completely controls the monitors' access to the Rafah crossing.
In other words, the powerless monitors can't reach the Rafah border crossing unless they receive a permit from the Israeli army which apparently can't resist the temptation of seeing thousands of Palestinians suffering and dying in the summer inferno of the Sinai desert.
Hence, the current nightmare.
There are many accomplices in this disgrace.
First and foremost, Israel, with its characteristic Nazi callousness is the main culprit because it refuses, without any logical reason, to allow these tormented Gazans back to their homes. In truth, sadism is the only explanation of what is happening. There is simply no other explanation.
Besides the conspicuous sadistic aspect of torturing these people, Israel is trying as much as possible to utilize the suffering of the stranded Gazans to exert pressure on Hamas and show Palestinians that Hamas could only bring suffering and pain to them.
But, in the final analysis, Israel is the Palestinians' solid enemy, as King Abdulah of Jordan said recently, and Israel wouldn't hesitate to commit the unthinkable in order to make Palestinians suffer. Indeed, Israel's consistent behaviors ever since its misbegotten birth nearly sixty years ago should leave no doubt as to the Nazi nature of this evil state.
The second culprit is the western-backed government in Ramallah which claims to represent all Palestinians.
It is shameful, to say the least, to watch Abbas and Fayyad and others basking in their false glory and appearing flamboyantly on the screens of Zionist-controlled western TV networks, babbling about the virtues of peace, while showing utter indifference toward the nightmarish plight of these helpless Palestinians.
In this macabre situation, any Palestinian is prompted to ask Abbas and Fayyad and Co.: How many Palestinians have to die at the Rafah border crossings before you urge your "friends" in Washington and Europe to pressure Israel to stop the enduring crime against the stranded Gazans? Do they have to give loyalty to the emergency government and to Muhammed Dahlan in order to make Israel's heart and America's heart and Abbas's heart relent?
More to the point, if your friends and allies in Washington and Brussels can't help you in your time of need, then what is the good of having friends as such?
In fact, your inaction and silence are more than suspicious. And the writing is already on the walls of Ramallah, Nablus and Hebron.
The third culprit is the European Union which has allowed Israel, this venomous and murderous entity, to impose its will on European monitors, rendering them an additional tool of repression against a helpless people, already tormented by 40 years of a Nazi-like military occupation.
It is really disgraceful that Europe behaves in such a manner.
Finally, the Egyptian government could do much to alleviate the suffering of the stranded Palestinians. Egypt could go as far as opening another border crossing with the Gaza Strip. It is unacceptable and shameful that 80 million Egyptians allow themselves to be enslaved by American Zionism in such a humiliating manner.
After all, no dignified state with any semblance of sovereignty should allow other states to confiscate its free will. Egypt, in short, should review and rethink its accommodative policies toward Israel, an entity that never stops trying to undermine Egyptian national security by any means imaginable.
Undoubtedly, the nightmare at the Rafah border crossing is a sad reflection of the moral degeneration now engulfing the Arab world as much as it is an expression of the criminal-minded discourse and moral callousness permeating through the aisles of western governments.
Needless to say, these governments have apparently chosen to accommodate Israeli Nazism rather than uphold the human ideals they mendaciously claim to espouse.
Perhaps, European peoples should rise up against their evil-minded governments. Otherwise, they, too, will be consumed by the evil.