What happens when the OTHER wall breaks

You and I never lost track of the fact that, even as Israel was being castigated for building a wall between herself and those who would blow her up, Egypt sat complacently behind a wall separating herself from the same people. It popped into the news a couple of times when smallish breaches occurred, but now it’s really made the headlines:

Tens of thousands of Palestinians poured into Egypt from Gaza Wednesday after masked gunmen used land mines to blast down a seven-mile barrier dividing the border town of Rafah.

Men and women walked unhindered or rode in donkey carts over the toppled corrugated metal along sections of the barrier, carrying goats, chickens and crates of Coca-Cola. Some brought back televisions, car tires and cigarettes and one man even bought a motorcycle. Vendors sold soft drinks and baked goods to the crowds.

They were stocking up on goods made scarce by an Israeli blockade of their impoverished territory since last week and within hours, shops on the Egyptian side of the divided border town of Rafah had run out of stock.

As you can see, most people didn’t go there to blend into the Egyptian population and vanish, they went there to shop: which tells you that the Egyptians, had they wanted to, probably could have made this stuff available to the Gazans all along. They didn’t for the same reason that has seen Arab nations, for 60 years, allow Palestinians to rot in the terroritories — they don’t give a flying whatsit about the Palestinians well-being; they care only about their being a perpetual festering sore keeping Israel visible as the bad guy to the rest of the world.