The Rafah border crossing between Egypt and Gaza has been closed off as Palestinians have nowhere to flee amid relentless Israeli airstrikes that started in response to the Hamas attack on southern Israel.
The Israeli military on Tuesday revised a recommendation for Palestinians to “get out” of Gaza through the Rafah crossing into Egypt. “Clarification: The Rafah crossing was open yesterday, but now it is closed,” the office of spokesman Lt-Col. Richard Hecht said, according to Reuters.
The New Arab reported that Egyptian officials said the crossing was closed off indefinitely. “The crossing will be closed indefinitely, for the situation has become quite dangerous after the Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip has had an impact on the Egyptian side of the crossing,” an Egyptian security source told the outlet.
Another source said Egypt was trying to ensure “no attempts of infiltration by Palestinians into Egypt can take place.” According to Israel’s Channel 13, Israel has threatened Egypt it would bomb any aid trucks heading into Gaza.
According to the Red Crescent, three Israeli airstrikes hit the Rafah border crossing within 24 hours after Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant announced a “complete siege of Gaza,” which involved cutting off food, water, electricity, and fuel.
Israeli Maj. Gen. Ghassan Alian, the head of an Israeli military agency in charge of policies in the West Bank and Gaza, said on Tuesday that Israel was turning Gaza into “hell.”
“Kidnapping, abusing and murdering children, women and elderly people is not human. There is no justification for that. Hamas has turned into ISIS, and the residents of Gaza, instead of being appalled, are celebrating,” he said. “Human animals must be treated as such. There will be no electricity and no water [in Gaza], there will only be destruction. You wanted hell, you will get hell.”
Gaza is one of the most densely populated places on earth, home to over two million people, including about one million children.
One can only hope at least Egypt has the courtesy of donating thousands of body bags.
Egypt illustrates the true meaning and worth of ‘Muslim brotherhood’.
There’s no Muslim Brotherhood. It has never existed.
I didn’t capitalize Brotherhood for a reason. You changed what I said by changing brotherhood to Brotherhood. Nice strawman you created and then knocked down. Do you really not know what brotherhood means?
define “brotherhood”; maybe Don is confusing that with the “sisterhood”? Ask that latest Supreme Court justice if she can figure it out.
fraternity
Al Sisi &co., imperial whores, are in power, not Qtub.
Not “Muslim Brotherhood” but “Muslim brotherhood”. The ‘brotherhood’ I used was intentionally NOT capitalized because it means: fraternity; that all Muslims stick together, but you read into whatever you want.
“all Muslims stick together”
You owe me a new keyboard for making me snort Diet Dr. Pepper out my nose all over this one.
Hamaa has ‘put out the call’ for all Muslims to rally to their cause so we will see what Muslim fraternity looks like. Muslims don’t get along with anyone including other Muslims; especially other Muslims.
True. No religious group larger than a very small sect gets along with other religious groups when it comes to questions of religion. And Islam starts breaking down into sectarian arguments before it even gets past its first and most important defining concept (tawhid, the “oneness of God”).
Even Hamas within Gaza is far from religiously monolithic. They’ve had numerous internal conflicts over e.g. attempts to impose “Islamic” dress codes on women, ban music, etc. They seem to have factions ranging from the formally “Muslim” but heavily influenced by prior secular/leftist Palestinian movements, to Islamic State/Taliban clones.
Sorta like the Catholic/Protestant squabbles/wars of the past.
Even the Shia and Sunni?
Do you mean the small differences between Shia and Sunnai?
The Sunni/Shia split (over who Mohammed’s successor was) is probably the biggest major division, but there are hundreds, if not thousands, of conflicting/competing Islamic sects that disagree on pretty much everything, starting with whether the “unity” of God means monotheism, pantheism, etc.
No need. The Israelis are experts in digging perfectly good mass graves. (See, no sarcasm)
A f*cking shooting gallery. Rocket from jets, drones, artillery, and then a ground assault with 300,000 reservists, plus, we are chipping in more weapons, and, a carrier group.
Yes, and did you see what HAMAS did before that?
I don’t see you bitch!ng when Russia invaded Ukraine with half his Army.
You mean after Israel did how much stuff to the Palestinians?
actually Russia simply came to the rescue of other Russians who live in a region that the Ukraine govt covets
You are pissing into the wind talking to these morons.
That is a wildly foreshortened view of history. You begin after all the wrongs done by Israel, excusing them all as never happening, and astounded by the rage of the people Israel is trying to drive off.
Mark: Don’t waste your time responding to these idiots. it is not worth the effort.
The Palestinians are “subhuman animals.” They get so upset when Israelis kill their children. I wouldn’t get upset if sexy female Israeli soldiers from Youtube murdered my children. Would you? (Sarcasm)
Correction two Carrier groups. This is headed to a confrontation with Iran. Duck your heads WW3 isout tom start.
While Zelenskyy has been doing plenty of posturing and pirouetting about the whole thing, I haven’t seen anyone mentioning the chief benefit to Ukraine if the Iranians do find themselves in a hot war. That would likely bring the provision of Iranian drones to Russian forces to a screeching halt.
9/11 here we come !!!
IsraHell turning Gaza into hell…! You couldn’t make this up if you wanted to…! Hezbollah would not be quiet watching this happen…!
Since when has the Palestinians known anything except a hellish existance.
FAFO Even Egypt wants Hamas and its supporters to suffer the wrath of Israel. Gaza need to cease being an Palestinian enclave and be incorporated into Israel. When I lived in the South, you could destroy fire ants by taking a shovel full of one hill and adding it to another hill and vice versa. The ants would fight to the death. I suggest moving Hamas to PLO territory and see if they still have a common goal.
This is to say nothing. Always a leadership vanguard rises organically to meet a crisis, having had to defeat any number of pretenders, fakers, … and inertia along the way. Hamas would easily put paid to the Zionist puppet, Abbas.
So what you want is to ethnically cleanse Palestinians or give them the right to vote in Israeli elections? I can’t tell.
One thing on Earth I can garantee. the Palestinians will never get to vote in an election in Israel.
are you equating Palestinians and Israelis, and therefore Muslims and Jews, with fire-ants ?
Are you so dense you can’t work out an analogy? Not everything is literal.
no, i’m just thinking that if i had said that, it would probably have been removed
“Kidnapping, abusing and murdering children, women and elderly people is not human.”
Is this not what Israel has been doing in Gaza and W Bank for the past 57 years? To tens of thousands of people?
75 years
I feel the occupation was the seminal event. W/o 1967, things would have settled down by now. Either a real 2-state would have come into being or W bank would have been absorbed into Jordan and Gaza into Egypt by now.
In retrospect, I think history will show that ’67 and the occupation that has followed was a huge mistake for the cause of Israel.
That maybe true but it does not help the Palestinians now in their time of travail and torture
Hi, Caliman, my original reply to you was censored so I will try again.
The 1918 Balfour Declaration was the original mistake that gave racist [ethnic slur deleted by moderator – TLK] settlers the right to colonize Palestine.
Zionism is a lot like Manifest Destiny. There were Americans and Israelis who genuinely believed in coexisting with the indigenous people. But when the indigenous resisted the tolerant Caucasian Americans and the tolerant Israelis mostly united with the racists. Like Manifest Destiny, Zionism is fundamentally based on valuing the lives of the indigenous less than the lives of the colonizers. Manifest Destiny and Zionism are both based on the erasure, expulsion or forced assimilation of the indigenous people. Manifest Destiny is internationally recognized as genocidal. Someday, I hope and international tribunal concludes that Israel’s blockade of Gaza qualifies as genocide under Article II sections (a) (b) and (c) of the 1948 United nations Convention on Genocide.
https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/documents/atrocity-crimes/Doc.1_Convention%20on%20the%20Prevention%20and%20Punishment%20of%20the%20Crime%20of%20Genocide.pdf
We can hope, but I’m not holding my breath. Maybe in a couple of hundred years…
Israel warned Palestinians to “leave Gaza.”
Egypt’s response is “No.”
Israel can’t dump its problem (indigenous people) onto neighbors. They just won’t take it.
By ensuring Palestinians cannot escape from their open-air prison and then murdering them with US supplied munitions, Israel will be free to take over more of what little remains of Palestine after the creation of Israel in 1948.
So far, Israel has taken over a whopping 10% of Palestine, including the territory within its borders (as codified in UNR 181), the occupied West Bank, the blockaded Gaza, etc. Jordan has the other 90%, and it’s unlikely that Israel will be taking it in the near term.
Let the Palestinians go to New Jersey.
What is happening in Gaza amounts to genocide! It’s a continuation of the ethnic leanusing during the nineteenforties. This is a crime against humanity!