After seven months of life under a crippling Israeli economic blockade of the Gaza Strip designed to choke off the terrorist group Hamas and keep Israeli citizens safe, the true color of the Palestinian people exploded this past week during a well-planned, pre-dawn operation, Palestinian militants used bombs, bulldozers and cutting torches to bring down sections of the 25-foot concrete and iron border fencing between the Gaza Strip and Egypt in the town of Rafah.
Within hours, tens of thousands of Palestinians were scrambling over the jumbled concrete slabs, walking past Egyptian border police and flooding into Egypt.
"Today is like paradise," said Ahmed Yousef, political adviser for Ismail Haniyeh, the deposed Palestinian Authority prime minister and the leader of the militant Islamic group Hamas, which controls Gaza. "This is a moment of great joy." Only the Palestinian Authority led by Hamas would say it’s a moment of great joy when bombs, bulldozers and torches cut down a fence of a sovereign nation.
Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak sought to reassure Israel that his forces would prevent any weapons from being smuggled through the open border but even the most liberal of Israeli politicians recognize that the situation has the chance of becoming a terror nightmare for Israel and possibly the entire Middle East if Al-Qaeda agents come back through into Gaza once the smoke clears. He said he had directed border guards to allow the Palestinians to enter Egypt because they were starving. "I told them to let them come in and eat and buy food and then return them later as long as they were not carrying weapons," he said. HOW STUPID CAN A GROUP OF PEOPLE GET THAN TO BELIEVE THAT MILITANTS WILL COME BACK INTO GAZA Without CARRYING WEAPONS?
The 1.5 million residents of the Gaza Strip have been squeezed by the economic embargo that Israel imposed in June after Hamas seized control. Almost all the factories have closed. An estimated 80,000 people have lost their jobs. The Gaza Strip essentially has run out of everything from fresh milk to cement. Over the weekend, Israel decided to turn up the pressure by cutting off fuel to Gaza. Its power plant was forced to shut down, throwing large swaths of the Gaza Strip into darkness Monday. According to media reports, Palestinian desperation was reaching a breaking point. It is this writer’s opinion that maybe if the Palestinian officials would spend more time investing in their people and not terror maybe there would not be need for desperation. If you LIVE by the sword, neighbor, you will DIE by the sword!
The Arab world has BILLIONS in oil revenues that it could share with the Palestinan people and help ease their plight. Why is it that when these things take place the blame always winds up on Israel’s door? This is not Israel’s fault but the fault of the leadership of Hamas who stubbornly refuses to recognize Israel as a nation and continues to vow her destruction. Hamas is a dangerous enemy to Israel’s west while Hezbollah continues to wage war to the north and Iran plans Israel’s destruction to the east.
Arab and U.S. officials in Washington said the Egyptian government assured the U.S. that the border would be closed quickly. Israeli leaders expressed concern that the open border could become a new route for arms smugglers. "Gaza is already a terrorist entity where they fire rockets every day," Israeli Foreign Minister Aryeh Mekel said. "If the exit is open, the entry is open." Israeli leaders say the sanctions on Gaza will continue until Palestinian militants end their daily mortar and rocket attacks on southern Israel and rightly so. There is growing evidence that Hamas was behind the rush on the fence even though the terrorist group denied any involvement.
Arab and U.S. officials in Washington said the Egyptian government assured the U.S. that the border would be closed quickly. Israeli leaders expressed concern that the open border could become a new route for arms smugglers. "Gaza is already a terrorist entity where they fire rockets every day," Israeli Foreign Minister Aryeh Mekel said. "If the exit is open, the entry is open." Israeli leaders say the sanctions on Gaza will continue until Palestinian militants end their daily mortar and rocket attacks on southern Israel and rightly so. There is growing evidence that Hamas was behind the rush on the fence even though the terrorist group denied any involvement.
Egypt is not a stranger to Palestinian violence. In May 2006 Egyptian authorities announced Palestinians based in Gaza helped train and finance the perpetrators of triple bomb blasts one month earlier in the Sinai desert resort town of Dahab. The attacks, which killed 24 civilians, were widely blamed on local cells of Sinai-based Bedouins working for al-Qaeda.
Also Egyptian security reports listed possible Hamas involvement in the suicide bombings of tourist centers in Taba in October 2004, killing 34 people, including 11 Israelis. Taba borders the Israeli resort town of Eilat. Israel's Kol Yisrael Radio reported that Egypt last week arrested Palestinians it suspects of plotting terror attacks in the Sinai. Said an Egyptian official: "If Palestinians from Gaza succeed in carrying out an attack against Egypt, it will be a turning point in Palestinian terrorism." That point friend has been turned!
Some analysts here long have warned of Palestinian anti-Egyptian sentiment, pointing in particular to Hamas, which was founded in 1987 as a military offshoot of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood. The Brotherhood seeks the overthrow of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak's regime and the creation of an Islamic theocracy throughout the Middle East. Egypt however has nobody to blame but itself.
Yet just seven years ago Egypt demanded these same Palestinians have sovereignty over the shrines in East Jerusalem. According to a World Net Daily report, Osama al-Baz, the top advisor of President Hosni Mubarak, said the al-Haram al-Sharif, or Noble Sanctuary, house to Al Aqsa and the Dome of the Rock mosques, should be run by a religious administration under the Palestinians' sovereignty. "Arabs and Palestinians can never accept any Israeli sovereignty over this area," Baz said at an Islamic intellectual forum in early 2001. The sovereignty over the site, known to Jews as Temple Mount, is the chief block to a Palestinian-Israeli peace agreement. Baz noted that "a just and comprehensive" peace in the region can never be reached unless the Arab rights are honored. My question is simple. What about Israel’s RIGHTS being honored? That is never brought up in any Arab discourse of peace.
He said that the Arab and Islamic countries have made it clear that only Muslims should have sovereignty over that spot. This same senior Egyptian official during this same speech in 2001 called on the Jewish state to “stop its continued brutalities against unarmed Palestinians who are fighting against Israel's occupation. The Israelis should be realistic, stop their violence and work for peace," Baz said. I thought that was what Israel had been doing since 1948 in trying to survive 5 wars that were all started by her Arab neighbors!
Mubarak has stated in the past that Jerusalem was a "very sensitive" issue that even the Palestinian authority has no right to give it up, adding that nobody can touch the sacredness of the Islamic holy site in East Jerusalem. Mr. Mubarak I strongly disagree with your assessment of Jerusalem being an Islamic holy site. Jerusalem is a JEWISH city built by Jewish hands and ordained to be the city of God, the God of Abraham, Isaac and JACOB, or Israel! Jerusalem is NOT the city of Allah or Mohammed!
It is this writer’s opinion that Egypt made a deal with the devil in 2001 and now the devil has come home to roost in early 2008. America needs to watch the events in the Gaza Strip this week and take a long hard look at its policy and desire to prop up a state along side Israel with these militants, terrorists and thugs. If we continue to pressure Israel into accepting a Palestinian state these events will take place on a common basis. Israel also needs to take a long hard look at the events of this past week realizing that the next time it may not be Egypt’s border walls that get knocked down but Israel’s!
Israel gave the Palestinians the Gaza in 2005 and the rocket attacks and terrorism have not stopped. America pressured Israel into this and within 2 weeks Hurricane Katrina came ashore in New Orleans; six months later Ariel Sharon suffered a massive stroke and the Palestinian people elected the terrorist group Hamas to oversee their governmental affairs. Hamas didn’t seize power -they were elected.
Ezekiel 35 speaks of an “ancient hatred” between the seed of Ishmael and Esau and the seed of Jacob that will increase in the latter days as the seed of Esau demands it wants to possess “both nations,” a reference this writer believes is to both Israel AND the Palestinian state the Arabs are screaming for. We need to pray for this situation without a doubt. The Arab world’s hatred for Israel may keep it from waking up to see the true colors of the Palestinian situation which is sad. The liberal media wants to blame Israel for this past week’s events but Israel has had no choice but to blockade Gaza to protect its people. The bigger issue that looms however is this. If they have to blockade Gaza to protect its people what do the Israeli government think they will be doing if a Palestinian state is created and Jerusalem is divided?? I can assure you it will be more than just walls that group of “desperate” Palestinians are trying to push down but it will be a whole sale large scale Arab attack upon Israel to “drive her into the sea.” (Note and memo to the liberal world media- if you shoot rockets into a nation and kill innocent civilians then you deserve becoming desperate!)
One quick note before we end this post ALL of this is yet another rumbling and piece of a much bigger puzzle setting the stage for the rapture of the Church, the Great Tribulation, Israel’s travail in the last days, the rise of the Antichrist, and the Second Coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. It’s getting late neighbor and its harvest time. Our redemption is soon drawing nigh and getting ever so closer!
