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Israel Secured Food Aid to the Palestinians — Not the US or Egypt
An UNRWA aid truck at the Rafah border crossing between Egypt and the Gaza Strip. Photo: Reuters/Amr Abdallah Dalsh
It turns out that there are two ways to open the humanitarian corridor from Rafah through Egypt, which Egypt nailed shut in early November.
One is to beg and plead with Cairo. The other is to let the IDF evacuate the Palestinian civilians in Rafah and take military command of the Gaza side of the crossing.
The first failed. The Wall Street Journal reported in February that Egyptian officials threatened the Egypt-Israel peace treaty could be suspended if Israel entered Rafah, or if any of Rafah’s refugees moved into Sinai.
Preventing refugees in a war zone from finding safe haven — even temporarily — is, if not a war crime, then totally uncivilized. Keep in mind that northern Sinai is almost entirely empty, and a temporary military facility could easily have been established there. Even NPR remarked on it.
“Almost entirely empty?” Well, except for Bedouins and ISIS.
ISIS? Yes. Israel has worked with Egypt for years to thwart ISIS and secure the Israel/Egypt border, including allowing Egypt to bring forces in excess of those permitted by the Camp David Accords. In 2019, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi told CBS News that cooperation between Cairo and Jerusalem was excellent.
“We have a wide range of cooperation with the Israelis,” he said.
So what happened, and what does that have to do with closing Rafah?
Israel has discovered nearly 700 tunnels inside Gaza, of which 70 thus far are known to go into Sinai. Look backward from there.
It seems that Egypt, much as it despises the Muslim Brotherhood, of which Hamas is the Palestinian branch, couldn’t refuse the benefits associated with the subway-sized tunnels from Gaza into Egypt. And those benefits are tied to Iran.
The Islamic Republic, the instigator of all chaos in the region, used the tunnels to ferry arms, ammunition, rocket factory parts, money, and food into Gaza for Hamas. Rafah also provided an exit for Hamas members who needed to escape.
As a side gig — as the kids say — other Palestinians who wanted to leave Gaza could get a visa through Egypt for about $10,000. In 2016, Al Jazeera reported that brokers were taking as much as 20 percent off the top. That helped to keep the border guards on the right side of the operation.
After hostage negotiations in Qatar stalled, Egypt agreed to chair new sessions in Cairo. The US was pleased.
At the same time — or because of that– the US tried to threaten and cajole Israel into ending the war without defeating Hamas, or entering Rafah. President Joe Biden said. “If they go into Rafah, I’m not supplying weapons.”
The Washington Post reported that the administration withheld intelligence information from Israel and only offered to “help the Israeli military pinpoint the location of Hamas leaders and find the group’s hidden tunnels” — if Israel agreed to limit the incursion. The Post characterized the information as “valuable.” An uproar about withholding from Israel to benefit Hamas caused the administration to backtrack, much as it did when it delayed precision arms shipments to Israel.
But administration officials continued to insist that Israel could not achieve success in Rafah. National security adviser Jake Sullivan opined, “A major ground operation [in Rafah] would be a mistake. … [T]he key goals Israel wants to achieve in Rafah can be done by other means.”
Secretary of State Antony Blinken had a definitive position speaking on Face The Nation on May 12. While Israel may have some military success in Rafah, he said, it will be one that “is not durable, one that’s not sustainable. And they will be left holding the bag on an enduring insurgency because a lot of armed Hamas will be left no matter what they do in Rafah.”
After realizing that Israel was going to take the crossing regardless of the American position, the US turned to Egypt, pleading for supplies to enter, but Cairo wouldn’t budge. Afraid that Israel would expose the whole operation, Egypt even more firmly closed the border, leaving aid trucks “rotting in the sun,” according to Reuters.
That changed when Israel successfully moved more than 900,000 Palestinians out of Rafah and took control of the crossing.
That was the second option.
Egypt has now agreed to move the food through Israel’s Kerem Shalom crossing, not the normal Rafah crossing, which is still closed. But for the people of Gaza, it’s a blessing.
How the Israeli operation Rafah plays out and how Israel ensures the security of its border and of its citizens remains unclear. What is clear, however, is that the American administration’s belief that Israel could not evacuate Rafah civilians safely and take the corridor was wrong. It is also clear that the administration’s power of persuasion with the Egyptian government is limited.
And, finally, it is clear that the Biden people are taking full credit for opening the gates of Rafah.
Shoshana Bryen is Senior Director of The Jewish Policy Center.
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Germany: 5 Killed, Scores Wounded after Saudi Man Plows Car Into Christmas crowd
Magdeburg Christmas market, December 21, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Christian Mang
i24 News – A suspected terrorist plowed a vehicle into a crowd at a Christmas market in the German city of Magdeburg, west of the capital Berlin, killing at least five and injuring dozens more.
Local police confirmed that the suspect was a Saudi national born in 1974 and acting alone.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz expressed his concern about the incident, saying that “reports from Magdeburg suggest something bad. My thoughts are with the victims and their families.”
Police declined to give casualty numbers, confirming only a large-scale operation at the market, where people had gathered to celebrate in the days leading up to the Christmas holidays.
The post Germany: 5 Killed, Scores Wounded after Saudi Man Plows Car Into Christmas crowd first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Syria’s New Rulers Name HTS Commander as Defense Minister
A person waves a flag adopted by the new Syrian rulers, as people gather during a celebration called by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) near the Umayyad Mosque, after the ousting of Syria’s Bashar al-Assad, in Damascus, Syria, Photo: December 20, 2024. REUTERS/Ammar Awad/File Photo
Syria’s new rulers have appointed Murhaf Abu Qasra, a leading figure in the insurgency which toppled Bashar al-Assad, as defense minister in the interim government, an official source said on Saturday.
Abu Qasra, who is also known by the nom de guerre Abu Hassan 600, is a senior figure in the Islamist Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) group which led the campaign that ousted Assad this month. He led numerous military operations during Syria’s revolution, the source said.
Syria’s de facto leader Ahmed al-Sharaa discussed “the form of the military institution in the new Syria” during a meeting with armed factions on Saturday, state news agency SANA reported.
Abu Qasra during the meeting sat next to Sharaa, also known by the nom de guerre Abu Mohammed al-Golani, photos published by SANA showed.
Prime Minister Mohammed al-Bashir said this week that the defense ministry would be restructured using former rebel factions and officers who defected from Assad’s army.
Bashir, who formerly led an HTS-affiliated administration in the northwestern province of Idlib, has said he will lead a three-month transitional government. The new administration has not declared plans for what will happen after that.
Earlier on Saturday, the ruling General Command named Asaad Hassan al-Shibani as foreign minister, SANA said. A source in the new administration told Reuters that this step “comes in response to the aspirations of the Syrian people to establish international relations that bring peace and stability.”
Shibani, a 37-year-old graduate of Damascus University, previously led the political department of the rebels’ Idlib government, the General Command said.
Sharaa’s group was part of al Qaeda until he broke ties in 2016. It had been confined to Idlib for years until going on the offensive in late November, sweeping through the cities of western Syria and into Damascus as the army melted away.
Sharaa has met with a number of international envoys this week. He has said his primary focus is on reconstruction and achieving economic development and that he is not interested in engaging in any new conflicts.
Syrian rebels seized control of Damascus on Dec. 8, forcing Assad to flee after more than 13 years of civil war and ending his family’s decades-long rule.
Washington designated Sharaa a terrorist in 2013, saying al Qaeda in Iraq had tasked him with overthrowing Assad’s rule and establishing Islamic sharia law in Syria. US officials said on Friday that Washington would remove a $10 million bounty on his head.
The war has killed hundreds of thousands of people, caused one of the biggest refugee crises of modern times and left cities bombed to rubble and the economy hollowed out by global sanctions.
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Sweden Ends Funding for UNRWA, Pledges to Seek Other Aid Channels
View of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) building in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip. Photo: Abed Rahim Khatib / Flash90.
i24 News – Sweden will no longer fund the U.N. refugee agency for Palestinians (UNRWA) and will instead provide humanitarian assistance to Gaza via other channels, the Scandinavian country said on Friday.
The decision comes on the heels of multiple revelations regarding the agency’s employees’ involvement in the October 7, 2023, Hamas-led massacre in southern Israel that triggered the war in Gaza.
Sweden’s decision was in response to the Israeli ban, as it will make channeling aid via the agency more difficult, the country’s aid minister, Benjamin Dousa, said.
“Large parts of UNRWA’s operations in Gaza are either going to be severely weakened or completely impossible,” Dousa said. “For the government, the most important thing is that support gets through.”
The Palestinian embassy in Stockholm said in a statement: “We reject the idea of finding alternatives to UNRWA, which has a special mandate to provide services to Palestinian refugees.”
Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Sharren Haskel thanked Dousa for a meeting they had this week and for Sweden’s decision to drop its support for UNRWA.
“There are worthy and viable alternatives for humanitarian aid, and I appreciate the willingness to listen and adopt a different approach,” she said.
The post Sweden Ends Funding for UNRWA, Pledges to Seek Other Aid Channels first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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