Eyeless and clueless in Gaza

When the Gazans blew a hole in the wall the Egyptians had erected to keep them in (so much for Islamic brotherhood; apparently the Egyptians have never liked them), they also blew a hole in the whole construct of what's really happening with the Palestinians: "But the moment Hamas presented Egypt with a chance to relieve all of that suffering, Hosni Mubarak, the Egyptian president, instead sent 20,000 truncheon-wielding police to seal the border. When that didn't work, the government blocked the resupply of food and other goods to the Egyptian border towns Rafah and El Arish, where hundreds of thousands of Gazans had streamed in previous days to buy supplies."

Rico says they're all screwed, and deservedly so. If the Arabs didn't hate the Israelis so (since time immemorial, but certainly since 1948), they'd have just absorbed the Palestinians years ago. But it served their ideology to keep the Palestinians as caged monkeys to show the world how mean the Israelis were; that's backfired now: "If anyone holds any doubts about Egypt's true view of the Palestinians, consider again what happened when Israel and Egypt made peace following Israel's capture of the Sinai and Gaza in the 1967 Six-Day War. In 1979, Egypt negotiated the return of the Sinai. As for Gaza, Egypt refused to take it back."

"In the Middle East, after 41 years of occupation and confrontation, it is now patently clear that Palestinians react to collective punishment by standing ever closer to their leaders and growing ever more angry with Israel, leading to more terror attacks. Unlike Washington, Israel realizes this - though at times Israelis seem to reach wistfully for the easy answer."

Rico says it sounds a lot like what happened in England in the 1940s; fortunately for the Israelis, there's no Winston Churchill among the Palestinians...