Netanyahu Misled US Congress about European Observers at Rafah Crossing

If Israel wants a say in passage via Rafah, it should permit passage between Gaza and the West Bank, writes Gisha director, Sarah Bashi, in today's guest post about Gaza's southern border being opened by Egypt through post-Mubarak legislation. Gisha is an Israeli NGO, an acronym which stands for Center for Freedom of Movement.

Gisha welcomes the announcement that Egypt will expand the ability of Gaza residents to travel abroad via Rafah Crossing, which has become Gaza's gateway to the world, in light of Israel's closure of Gaza's airspace and territorial waters and restrictions on travel via Erez Crossing. Gisha notes the need also to permit passage of people and goods between Gaza and the West Bank, recognized by Israel as a single territorial unit whose integrity is the basis for a two-state solution.

Since the capture of an Israeli soldier in June 2006, Israel has vetoed the implementation of the U.S.-brokered 2005 Agreement on Movement and Access which gave Israel security supervision over Rafah Crossing in exchange for a commitment to permit access between Gaza and the West Bank. If Israel wants a say concerning passage via Rafah, it should implement its commitment to allow Palestinians to travel between Gaza and the West Bank.

The Egyptian commitment concerning Rafah includes longer operating hours, no numerical limit on passengers, and visa-free travel, except for men aged 18-40. Crossing for Palestinians is expected to continue to be limited to those listed in the Israeli-controlled population registry. The expansion does not appear to include passage of goods, which are restricted to the Israeli-controlled crossings and subject to prohibitions on construction materials and export.

Background – Netanyahu Mislead Congress.

Since Israel closed Gaza's airspace and territorial waters and all but closed Erez Crossing to Palestinians, Rafah Crossing has become the gateway to the outside world for 1.5 million Palestinian residents of Gaza. Crossing via Erez (on the border between Gaza and Israel) is limited to "extraordinary humanitarian cases, especially urgent medical cases", preventing Palestinians from traveling between Gaza and the West Bank.

Rafah Crossing was operated according to the U.S.-brokered Agreement on Movement and Access until June 2006, when Israel announced its suspension following the capture of the Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's comment before the U.S. Congress that in Rafah, "the European observers evaporated overnight" failed to note that the "evaporation" was ordered by Israel, which refused to allow the EU border mission observers to reach their post and has objected to the implementation of the agreement ever since. The EU observers have been waiting in their hotel in Ashkelon for the last five years, waiting for Israeli permission to return to Rafah.

Rafah remained mostly closed from June 2006 to June 2010, when Egypt opened it in the wake of the flotilla incident for limited categories including holders of foreign passports or visas and those seeking medical attention in Egypt. Between June 2010 and January 2011, 19,000 people per month on average crossed Rafah in both directions, 47% of the number of people who crossed monthly in the first half of 2006. Crossing for Palestinians is limited to those listed in the Israeli-controlled population registry.
(Many files were destroyed in aerial assaults during Operation Cast Lead.)Since the 2005 "disengagement", goods have not been permitted to pass via Rafah, except for humanitarian assistance which Egypt occasionally permits through Rafah.

Horrors - Ancient Arms Caches along Sinai's Way of Horus, claims Haaretz

Worryingly close to Rafah, archaeologists have uncovered huge weapons caches in the Sinai, at least according to a report published in today's Haaretz newspaper. It then recaps an agency reporter's tale about 4 Egyptian temples found along the Road of Horus. Reading beteen the lines, it seems that there were no actual weapons left to be found, but impressively big buildings with enough room to store them. Speculative reporting like this shows the same skewed logic that assumed a warehouse in Syrian wasteland which had been visited by North Koreans must hold a nuke reactor and should be secretly obliterated by the IDF. True, too many present day weapons get smuggled into Gaza along these ancient military routes, and then by burrowing under the border fences. Perhaps the headline writer couldn't resist the usual newsy phrases, particularly since the announcement, four months after arrests, that the Sinai was Hezbollah's latest hotspot for plotters.

Arms Storehouse Uncovered in Sinai

Archaeologists exploring an old military road in the Sinai have unearthed four new temples amidst the 3,000-year-old remains of an ancient fortified city that could have been used as a stronghold during the Egyptian occupation of Mesopotamia and Canaan, and to impress foreign delegations visiting Egypt, antiquities authorities announced Tuesday.

Archaeological findings have determined that a series of fortresses were built in the area and were used as weapons storehouses for soldiers traveling northwards. One source, a wall painting found in the Karnak temple in Luxor, depicts 11 strongholds built in northern Sinai

Among the discoveries was the largest mud brick temple found in the Sinai with an area of 70 by 80 meters (77 by 87 yards) and fortified with mud walls 3 meters (10 feet) thick, said Zahi Hawass, chief of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities.

The find was made in Qantara, 2 1/2 miles (4 kilometers) east of the Suez Canal. These temples mark the latest discovery by archaeologists digging up the remains of the city on the military road known as "Way of Horus." Horus is a falcon-headed god, who represented the greatest cosmic powers for ancient Egyptians.

The path once connected Egypt to Palestine and is close to present-day Rafah, which borders the Palestinian territory of Gaza. Archaeologist Mohammed Abdel-Maqsoud, chief of the excavation team, said the large brick temple could potentially rewrite the historical and military significance of the Sinai for the ancient Egyptians.

The temple contains four hallways, three stone purification bowls and colorful inscriptions commemorating Ramses I and II. The grandeur and sheer size of the temple could have been used to impress armies and visiting foreign delegations as they arrived in Egypt, authorities said.

The dig has been part of a joint project with the Culture Ministry that started in 1986 to find fortresses along the military road. Hawass said early studies suggested the fortified city had been Egypt's military headquarters from the New Kingdom (1569-1081 B.C.) until the Ptolemaic era, a period lasting about 1500 years.

In a previous find, archaeologists there reported finding the first ever New Kingdom temple to be found in northern Sinai. Studies indicated the temple was built on top of an 18th Dynasty fort (1569-1315 B.C.).

Last year, a collection of reliefs belonging to King Ramses II and King Seti I (1314-1304 B.C.) were also unearthed along with rows of warehouses used by the ancient Egyptian army during the New Kingdom era to store wheat and weapons.

O Danny Boy, the press, the press are calling...all those spoiled Crybabies

Has this man been spending too much time with Joe the Plumber, the neophyte PJTV stringer? That neocon scribe's notion that the media has "no business in it" is echoed by the head of the Government Press Office and seems to be plunging the media here into despair.

"To be honest with ya, I don't think journalists should be (allowed) anywhere near . . . war," opined Joe in Sderot. "You guys report where our troops are at, what's happening day-to-day, you make a big deal out of it. I think it's asinine... well, you don't know the full story behind it half the time, so I think the media should have no business in it."

Hmmm. The Israeli government seconds that emotion, and would prefer to strand the press corps on the Hill of Shame, or else take them on a day trip to meet the settlers. Branding foreign journalists "spoiled crybabies" unwilling to make "a little effort" to get into Gaza during Operation Cast Lead, Government Press Office head Danny Seaman (pictured above) claims, astonishingly, that foreign reporters were not banned from visiting the Gaza Strip. It's just that the crossing was closed. (He may be burnishing his rightwing mythmaking skills in a bid to be a spokesman for Bibi Netanyahu, who many believe will be elected Prime Minister next month.)

Speaking to the Jerusalem Post, the Foreign Press Association Chairman Steve Gutkin disputed this, and said the association was pursuing a petition with the High Court of Justice to arrange regular access.

"There was no ban," Seaman declared, "Israel did not want to endanger the lives of the workers at the crossings so we didn't open them, not for humanitarian reasons and not for foreign journalists."

"Those spoiled crybabies just didn't want to put a little effort in [to getting into Gaza]," he said "We never arrested anyone who went in, nor are we running after them now," which proves that it wasn't an actual Israeli policy.

"In hindsight, next time we should make it an actual policy. This week proves it. All of the reporters have been let in and they are accepting everything everyone says at face value. Maybe 3% are calling and asking for an Israeli response, or talking to the IDF spokesman. They are a fig leaf for Hamas.

"Their coverage right now is a disgrace to the profession. Instead of reporting, they are settling scores. Reporting without both sides, without a context is an abuse of the profession," he declared.

Meanwhile, Steve Gutkin, AP bureau chief for Israel and the Palestinian Territories, said the Foreign Press Association was pursuing a court ruling.

"There were actually two petitions," he explained, "one for immediate access to Gaza during the operation and one for general access to Gaza even in peacetime."

"The ban began in November, even before the operation," he pointed out. "The ban constituted a severe restriction on information vital to the world."

Israel refused to open any of its crossings to allow foreign journalists into the Strip during the three-week-long operation, leading many broadcasts from international media to begin or end with a mention of the prohibition.

As a result, international viewers and media organizations were forced to rely on local Palestinian stringers, prompting concerns among Israel's supporters about objectivity.

"It was definitely the correct decision. If foreign journalists had been killed, and in such a close quarters urban combat environment that was inevitable, then Israel would have immediately been blamed," Zvi Mazel, former Israeli ambassador to Egypt and now a fellow at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs (JCPA) maintained.

"At the very least, the journalists would have interfered with IDF operations in ways which would have put at risk more soldiers' lives," he added.

Dr. Yariv Ben-Eliezer, director of Media Studies, The Lauder School of Government, IDC, was even more vociferous in his approval of the ban.

"In Lebanon, they let every journalist have whatever access he wanted and there was chaos, which interfered with the fighting. They changed the concept for this operation.

"I don't think the US took journalists into Grenada, or the British into the Falklands. It is our right to decide not to let them in if we believe it will help the operation," he said.

Neither Mazel nor Ben-Eliezer seemed in the least bit concerned with the negative press Israel has been receiving as reporters moved into Gaza.

Ben-Eliezer attributed the complaints about the ban to a general anti-Semitic attitude in the world.

"There is a tendency in many countries to view the Jews as the beaten, downtrodden ones. If the Jew does the beating, then that is deemed unacceptable. I would rather be accused and alive than be the favorite of the British and the others and be dead," he declared.

Sudanese Migrants' Exodus to Israel

Hundreds of Sudanese migrants who have crossed the southern desert on foot into Israel now are imprisoned in the so-called Promised Land. And, despite Israel’s pledge to evaluate each case individually, 48 new arrivals were summarily expelled this month immediately after they were caught. The trickle of mostly Muslim asylum-seekers from Africa has become a flood and created a crisis of conscience inside Israel, where security concerns routinely override compassion. Al-Qaeda is active in the Sudan, and this raises alarms.

Some Israelis argue that,after the horrors of the Nazi genocide in Europe, it is morally reprehensible for Israel’s Jews to turn away people fleeing from persecution. Memories of relatives who were refused asylum in the 1930s and sent back to be part of the Final Solution are still excruciating. Around 70 desperate Africans sneak across Israel's barren southern border every night to seek refuge among sympathetic Jews.

But pragmatic politicians warn that Israel, with its population of 7 million, could soon be engulfed by up to 3 million Sudanese. The majority fled from the brutal savagery of civil war and drought-ravaged lands years ago and now seek a softer life in Israel; they want to escape racist abuse and maltreatment in Egypt.

“Israel puts these people at grave risk by expelling them with no proper procedure and no indication of Egypt’s willingness to accept them,” warned Bill Frelick, the refugee policy director for Human Rights Watch. Many have escaped from war-blighted Darfur, travelled north through Chad or Egypt, and had hoped to remain temporarily in Israel until resettled in a third-country.

Sending an illegal migrant back to Sudan after he has visited Israel, an enemy nation, is tantamount to a death sentence.

Last month, the Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert promised asylum to 500 refugees who escaped the horrors of Darfur, but the burgeoning numbers have numbed public sympathy. Government spokesman David Baker clarified that “The policy of returning back anyone who enters illegally will pertain to everyone, including those from Darfur.” Olmert insists that President Hosni Mubarak personally assured him Egypt will safeguard Sudanese who are sent back; but concerns heightened after a tv interview with an Israeli soldier who witnessed Egyptian troops beating and shooting dead four Sudanese refugees trying to slip across the border on August 1st.

Mustafa, a laborer who fled Darfur six years ago and was unhappy living in Cairo, has been under ‘house arrest’ on an Israeli kibbutz for the past year, earning a wage to send home to his relatives in Sudan while his case is reviewed. Other African ‘prisoners’ are assigned jobs at beach resorts in Eilat. Workers are needed to replace the Palestinians now prevented from reaching their jobs by checkpoints and the security wall. Though prohibited from leaving the workplace, Sudanese refugees manage to earn reasonable salaries inside Israel. Word has spread, not by bush telegraph but by cell phone. In 2004 the the United Nations registered just five Sudanese here; Until 2006, with the intifada at full tilt, few asylum seekers would consider Israel. Now, sixty or seventy refugees cross into Israel each night; activists estimate that at least 3000 are inside the country.

Mustafa , age 31, dreads the day he gets deported. He still has nightmares after Egyptian immigration police locked him up for ten days in a cramped jail because he had no documents. “That place is unimaginable,” he recalled recently. “Fifty of us were curled up, very hot, like cooking meat, and everybody was smoking, shouting....It ‘s difficult for a human being to endure vermin crawling over you while you are still alive.”

At great risk, Mustafa took a hand-drawn map of Sinai and set out alone for Israel, which he considers the first outpost of the West.
Bedouin smugglers are willing to spirit refugees across the 132 mile-long frontier, along with prostitutes and drugs, but they can charge able-bodied men $1000 a head. Women pay $600.

Mustafa trekked alone all night through dunes and scrub, but he neglected to bring any drinking water. By journey’s end, his thirst drove him to turn himself in at an Israeli checkpoint. “When I thought of the water, I forgot everything,” he admitted, Israeli soldiers are under orders to arrest stray illegals they encounter in the desert. Security forces and police must make sure illegal aliens get a medical check-up for dehydration before rounding them up and locking them away in Khetziot Prison, a remote desert jail close to the Egyptian border. Men are kept apart from their families here.

Few of the Sudanese women prisoners planned on a permanent move to Israel, observed Anat Hoffman, director of the Israel Religious Action Center,a Reform organization which has launched an outreach program to African refugee families. “They’ve heard so much about Israel in the news, they imagine it’s a huge place, maybe not quite so big as Europe, but just as important," she said. "No one wants our free Hebrew-Arabic dictionaries; they prefer to learn English and eventually to end up in America. They think of the US as the magic place where people of color have a chance. Condi Rice seems like some powerful black queen to them.“

"No one can expect that Israel alone can be the solution for all the Darfur refugees, and we urge the international community to act decisively. Israel is willing to play her part in the framework of international efforts," a Foreign Ministry statement spelled out. A single Messianic Jew in the Negev has erected shelter for 50 Sudanese refugees, according to the Economist.
In contrast to the government's dithering, many private Israelis have been generous. A Jerusalem-based religious group seeks to help the small minority of non-Muslim refugees who, if deported to an Arab country, would come under intense pressure to convert. Christian Sudanese refugees are at particular risk. Egyptian interrogators acting under Sudanese security service supervision routinely torture them to extract intelligence about who else might be reverting to Christianity.

Charmaine Hedding, a spokeswoman for the Christian Embassy, a pro-Zionist Evangelical group, suggested that a number of churches in America would welcome Sudanese Christians sent on from Israel. "Let us relocate these people; 1,000 people is manageable," she said.

Meanwhile, while volunteers try to firm up the arrangements, another seventy desperate Sudanese will evade Egyptians and slip through the desert border into Israel every night.

NOTE: UNRWA officials asked that names be disguised to protect the refugees while their status is determined. Guest post, copyright Jan McGirk, 08/21/2007
.......

Pointedly hostile

Once the Erez and Rafah crossings reopen, expect thorough security at border checkpoints leading in and out of the locked cage of Gaza. This Reuters wire photo of a Hamas gunman at the ready shows a new use of baggage x-ray machines; presumably it's not a new way to inspect for pointedly obvious weapons.

Although the Likud party leader Benjamin Netanyahu and his ilk scolded Israeli pols for allowing the rise of "Hamastan" and now call for an Israeli siege that will cut off Gaza's electricity, fuel, and even water, most Israeli human rights advocates insist that for the 1.5m trapped inside, the misery inflicted would be unacceptable. Food stocks will last less than two weeks

Hardliners scorn Egypt for not halting weapon-smuggling through tunnels into the Strip. They predict that Israel will be blamed for any suffering regardless of its actions, and suggest that in order to eliminate Hamas terror strikes, IDF drones might as well take out anyone inside the enclave who has a weapon. Others sense that the Palestinians' internecine hostilities are not so clear cut by geography, and caution that clandestine Hamas-supporters inside the West Bank will soon resort to assassinations and bombs. It's tense out there.

Triple threat: Crocodile chaos at checkpoint

Border guards at the usually-closed Rafah crossing from Egypt into Gaza shrieked in fear last Thursday after an oddly chubby veiled woman was taken aside for a closer inspection. Beneath her loose robe she had strapped a girdle of live crocodiles! The policewoman screamed and bolted from the search cubicle. Even her seen-it-all superiors succumbed to pat-down panic when the dangerous materials in question had teeth and claws.

According to press reports, this was no suicide bomber, then, but a wildlife smuggler. She had tied the mouths of three crocodiles shut with string and cinched the trussed reptiles around her waist. (Photo courtesy of Rafah's European observers.) Each was about 20 inches long, and could be sold for around $500, equivalent to a couple months' salary.

The clandestine crocodile girdle was not the first wildlife contraband seized at this sensitive frontier, where arms and drugs are far more common. Another lady once tried to sneak through a monkey tied to her chest, and attempts to smuggle exotic birds and a tiger cub into Gaza have been thwarted. Wearing full hijab, this smuggler was arrested and her reptiles returned to Egyptian custody. The policewomen finally stopped squealing and some even admired the gumption it took to strap on a reptile belt.

Red Sea, red indeed

Izzy took off for the Sinai coast last week, despite the latest terrorism alerts and arrests, and had a blast. No, not literally. We just relaxed and took a pleasant dip in the Red Sea on the far side of the border. This time, during my sixth swim here ever, the water was blood red. Clearly red. Not an illusion.

Scholars always say that the Red Sea's evocative name has nothing to do with its colour, but is derived from a mis-translation of the Hebrew name, Yam suph (ים סוף)--or "Reed Sea"-- the one through which Moses and his Biblical throng made their exodus. Wikipedia's clickable clique notes that this traditional name comes from the Greek Erythra Thalassa (Ερυθρά Θάλασσα), Latin Mare Rubrum, and Arabic Al-Baḥr Al-Aḥmar. The colour red also might indicate the cardinal direction south, or the rich colour of the sunburnt earthen hills that crouch down to the water's edge and get reflected in the waters. Hmmmm. Could have fooled me.
The simplest explanation is that old-time sailors saw red. Check out my photographic proof above, snapped on the Gulf of Aqaba just north of Nuweiba in the Egyptian Sinai one week ago. (On this aerial photo below, it's near the tip of the little watery horn on the right.)


This startling redness was not a smelly slick on top, like the red tides of southern California. It was not a chemical. The pigment was mixed right into the translucent water and it resembled Martian canal-water or a sign from the heavens that blood would flow. Abdullah, a Bedouin scuba instructor, reassured us that this was just algae which overblooms once in a while, whenever the reef fish which usually eat it are in decline. The scientific name of this plankton-like stuff is cyanobacteria Trichodesmium erythraeum, and I even found a microscopic photo.

Alarmingly, the condition means the coral reefs are at risk.