Comment by wat10000
1 day ago
They've also been cooperating on blockading Gaza for a couple of decades. Israel gets most of the attention for that, mostly rightfully so, but people seem to forget that there's a border with Egypt too and that has also had very limited access.
Egypt learned on other's mistakes for once. They saw how Jordan welcomed Palestinians on their land and they repaid the kindness by launching a coup against the government in 1970. No wonder not a single anti-Israeli coalition country is willing to deal with Palestinians directly at their own home and are keeping borders watertight :) .
Don't forget that after being expelled from Jordan, Arafat relocated to Lebanon where he proceeded to take over the South ("Fatahland"), start a civil war, and pull in Israel with constant attacks across the border. Until Israel kicked them out in 1982, the Palestinians played the disruptive, parasitic role in Lebanon that Hezbollah plays today. In fact, Hezbollah rose to power precisely by filling the void left by the Palestinians in 82.
You're probably aware of your bigotry, as the stupid smiley at the end of your comment seems to suggest, but your reasoning only serves to support the pre-made conclusion of 'Palestinians are genetically evil'.
How can you not acknowledge that essentialism is basically correct?
Some cultures go thousands of years without ever forming civilizations that escape barbarism. Slavs in particular seem especially unable to find their way out of tyranny, for literally thousands of years.
Sometimes you call a spade a spade. Essences exist. Copes against it like “intersectionality” have been thoroughly rejected by the body politic and that’s why you see zoomer and gen alpha talking like they’re all from 4chan - because 4chan was the only place where essentialism was not only accepted but encouraged.
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As an Arab friend summed it up, 'All Arab governments like to trumpet the Palestinian cause when it serves them, but none of them are willing to lift a finger to help the Palestinians.'
Are you sure? Jordanians tried and it burned them spectacularly. And if my memory served, Egypt also tried to some extent and eventually was eagerly and happily offloading Gaza into Israel's hands. Then, they built a huge border defensive line to keep Gazan out that would make Trump's Mexican border a joke in comparison.
At some points people need to wonder why.
> At some points people need to wonder why.
Could you imagine me making the same argument with other historically 'unwanted' groups, like for example Black people or Jews? If these populations keeep getting kicked out and marginalised through millennia, surely you have to start wondering why.
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Egypt is trying to have their cake and eat it too. Total crackdown on islamists at home - whether Hamas or any other incarnation of the Muslim Brotherhood - but also making sure they remain a thorn in the side of Egypt's rivals. See for example the massive smuggling tunnels discovered by the IDF in Rafah in 2024, which had been keeping Hamas covertly resupplied through Egypt. Hard to imagine that Egypt was unaware.
To be fair, part of the peace deal between Egypt and Israel gave Israel some control over the crossing, and they seized it entirely during the war.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rafah_Border_Crossing
> The Rafah crossing was opened by Israel after the 1979 peace treaty and remained under Israeli control until 2005...
> Under a 2007 agreement between Egypt and Israel, Egypt controls the crossing but imports through the Rafah crossing require Israeli approval.
This is to a large part to give Egypt plausible deniability. They don’t want to deal with Gaza, refugees, or a humanitarian crisis, but also don’t want the political fallout of taking action like the Israelis do.
Eh, 50/50. Israel would not respond positively to Egypt throwing the gates wide open.
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People don't forget it. But Egypt is a dictatorship aligned with US/Israel, so there's again not much we can do there. Ending foreign aid to Egypt is probably very aligned with ending foreign aid to Israel in terms of popularity among American voters
> Ending foreign aid to Egypt is probably very aligned with ending foreign aid to Israel in terms of popularity among American voters
I strongly suspect the average American has absolutely zero sense of how much foreign aid we give Egypt. That's not to contradict your point directly, just that it isn't a very salient part of American politics (unlike Israeli foreign aid).
> it isn't a very salient part of American politics (unlike Israeli foreign aid).
I feel like Israeli aid, while vastly more salient than it used to be, is still mostly salient as a left-of-center wedge issue, otherwise being about as salient as your average major foreign policy issue - ranking just under the least salient domestic policy issue, which ranks just under the most minor personal quality of any candidate, which ranks under the current state of the economy, which ranks under the current perceived state of the economy. Wow, that's way too many times to use "salient" in one sentence.
And for the record, I'm not arguing about how much people should care, just how much they do.
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