Egyptian government to blame for failing to end Israel's siege of Gaza, says Islamic Jihad leader Ziad Nakhla

Date: 13 / 04 / 2008  Time:  11:48
Gaza – Ma'an –

Arab and Islamic governments, and especially the Egyptian government, are to blame for failing to break Israel's siege of the Gaza Strip, the Deputy Secretary General of the Islamic Jihad movement, Ziad Nakhla, said on Sunday.

He told Ma'an, "The Palestinian citizen realizes that Israel is an enemy of the Palestinian people, yet he finds it difficult to understand how the Arab countries, namely Egypt, fail to help break the Israeli siege."

"When we talk about Egypt, we are addressing our main strategic dimension, yet it is at the same time we are surprised at the campaign led by some Egyptian journalists who devote efforts to get us to be obsessed in confrontations with Egypt while we know our battle has always been with the Israelis. This war the journalists wage is unjustifiable," Nakhla explained.

Nakhla urged Egypt to open its border with the Gaza Strip as a show of solidarity in the face of Israeli occupation.

An international agreement says that the Rafah crossing point between the Gaza Strip and Egypt is controlled jointly by Egypt, Israel, and the Palestinian authority. Israel has effectively forced the crossing closed along with all of the Strip's other crossing points since last June. Egypt has, however, opened the crossing at times of extreme humanitarian need, or on other significant occasions, such as the Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca.

Israel has imposed a tightening blockade on the tiny Gaza Strip for over nine months, causing the Strip's economy to collapse, and creating what international aid agencies are calling the worst humanitarian situation there in 40 years.

Egyptian government cuts supplies to areas near Gaza Strip to tighten Israeli siege of the Palestinian territory

Sunday April 13, 2008 07:52 by Saed Bannoura - 1 of International Middle East Media Center - IMEMC Editorial Group

In a bid to help the Israeli government in their siege of the Gaza Strip, Egyptian officials have agreed to cut off supplies to towns in the Egyptian Sinai peninsula that border the Gaza Strip.

Israel has cut off the Gaza Strip from the outside world for nearly two years, which has caused severe suffering for the civilian population of Gaza. International and Israeli humanitarian organizations, including the United Nations, have condemned the siege as a form of collective punishment of the Palestinian people, which is banned under international law and treaties signed by Israel.

On Saturday, the Egyptian government reiterated their support for Israel, adding that they will assist the Israeli government in their policy of forced starvation of the population of Gaza, by cutting off sections of their own nation that border the Gaza Strip.

The Egyptians who live in Sinai will thus also be impacted, for their crime of living in an area near the border with Gaza.

According to the Egyptian government, by cutting off supplies to the Egyptian towns near Gaza, they will remove the temptation for the Palestinians in Gaza to break the border fence to try to obtain supplies, as they did on January 23.

The imprisoned population of Gaza has been prevented from leaving the Gaza Strip since the Hamas government was elected by the Palestinian people in January 2006. Israel has prevented food, medicine, humanitarian aid and medicine from entering the Gaza Strip, in addition to halting all commerce, import and export activity.

As a result, the economy of the Gaza Strip has plummeted - unemployment rates are around 90%, and the entire population has become dependent on foreign aid that Israel refuses to allow them to have. Malnutrition rates among children have skyrocketed, and hundreds of patients have died to to lack of medical care.