Egypt must stand up for itself

How many more Israeli insults and humiliations can Cairo take?

It is not enough for the Egyptian authorities to leak information to the US news site Axios saying that Egyptian negotiators refused to receive the maps presented by their Israeli counterparts of the deployment sites for Israeli forces in the Salaheddin (Philadelphi) corridor along the Egyptian-Palestinian border in the Gaza Strip.

This refusal should have been announced in the context a strong statement from the Egyptian leadership firmly rejecting continued participation in the farce of the Gaza ceasefire talks.

These futile exchanges have been going for ten months at alternate meetings in Cairo and Doha. They serve only to provide diplomatic and political cover for the massacres committed as part of Israel’s war of annihilation on the Gaza Strip which has so far claimed 40,000 lives, mostly of children, and injured 93,000 people who lack medical care. This in addition to destroying 90% of the homes and buildings, and displacing some two million people who are near starving because of the closure of the seven crossings into the Strip to prevent the delivery of food and humanitarian aid.

The takeover by Israeli forces of the Salaheddin corridor, closure of the Rafah crossing, and shelling of the Martyr Mustafa Hafez School west of Gaza City (killing of 20 displaced people who were taking refuge there), are an insult to Egypt and its leadership, army, and people. A far bigger insult than that dealt to Iran by the assassination of Hamas leader Ismail Haniya in the heart of Tehran.

The Egyptian leadership should take the initiative itself. It should terminate these duplicitous and entrapping talks which the US is using to prolong the genocidal war and mass murder of the Gaza Strip’s population, and close its doors to the Israeli and US intelligence chiefs who have started spending more time in Doha and Cairo than in their own capitals and offices.

I am not calling on the Egyptian army to go to war with its Israeli counterpart, though that is a legitimate demand I am entitled to make as a native of the Gaza Strip whose recovery is Egypt’s responsibility. But the constant insults and humiliations incessantly heaped by Israel on Egypt have crossed all red lines and cannot be accepted.

The Salaheddin corridor stretching the length of the Egyptian-Palestinian border is a crucial symbol of sovereignty. Its occupation violates the Egyptian-Israeli peace accords which, it has been clearly demonstrated, Egypt has been respecting unilaterally while the other side deliberately and routinely flouts them — because there’s nobody there to prevent it or compel it to comply with the agreements (however dismal and shameful they have always been).

The Egyptian leadership should have refused to receive the avowed Zionist Anthony Blinken who betrayed his purpose when he announced that Netanyahu had accepted the US proposal in full and the ball was in Hamas’ court. It knew full well he was lying in keeping with his convictions and commitment to defending the occupier state and its massacres. But, regrettably, it did receive him and rolled him out red carpets. It may soon be receiving CIA chief William Burns for a further round of futile and entrapping talks.

I mentioned the Mustafa Hafez School. It is named after a heroic Egyptian officer who was assassinated by an Israeli letter bomb in the mid-1950s and continues to hold a special place in the hearts of the people of the Gaza Strip. He had been sent there to help sow the first seeds of resistance after the 1948 Nakba and train fighters to bear arms and launch raids into the occupied Palestinian interior. He symbolizes the early role of Egypt and its people in resisting the usurpation of Palestine and championing its people’s legitimate right to resist.

Egypt’s leadership must, I repeat, shut down this talking-shop of negotiations to uphold the country’s honour, and insist on an immediate Israeli withdrawal from the Salaheddin corridor, halt to the massacres, end to the occupation of the Gaza Strip, and reopening of the Rafah crossing for the entry of humanitarian and medical aid without delay.

I swear by God Almighty that if the Egyptian leadership were to hold fast to these demands, the US administration would go back to it on its knees and agree to all its terms. The US only understands the language of force and defiance. The Lebanese resistance’s leadership sent the Zionist US envoy Amos Hochstein packing and refused to deal with him either directly or indirectly; The Yemenis bankrupted the port of Umm al-Rashrash (Eilat) form a distance of 2,000km and made the Red Sea off limits to Israeli shipping; The US was defeated by the resistance in Afghanistan, Iraq and even Somalia when it was at the height of its power. What does proud and mighty have to fear?

Finally, a word to Iran and the leaders of the Resistance Axis: If retaliation for the murder of martyrs Ismail Haniya and Fouad Shukr has been postponed in order to deny the US a pretext to sabotage the talks on ending the war on Gaza, that pretext has expired.

The majority of Arabs and Muslims hope this justified and much-deserved retaliation will not be delayed for longer. It will be the only means by which to put an end to the US and Israel’s imperious rampaging in our region.

https://www.raialyoum.com/egypt-must-stand-up-for-itself/