Wednesday, May 25, 2011

People seem to forget about this border

The ruling Egyptian military government has announced that the border between Egypt and Gaza, the one most Western media has forgotten, will be opened this week-end. This may be a sop to "growing sentiment here in favor of distancing the country from Israel". But one can't help wondering which way popular sentiment and, indeed, the government will go when Gazan Palestinians rush into Egypt in large numbers as has happened before. After all, we still don't know how long the reconciliation between Hamas and Fatah, which is alleged to have prompted the move, will last. There is also the interesting question of how many of those peaceful Gazan Palestinians will use this development to build up an arsenal against Israel and to try to get a few suicide/homicide bombers into that country. Anything rather than do some hard work to make Gaza work.

Then again, do they need to make Gaza work with all the money that is pouring in. Apparently, this poverty-stricken region, this concentration camp, this latter-day Warsaw ghetto is about to acquire a huge shopping mall.
The biggest Palestinian shopping mall is scheduled to open in the Gaza Strip in mid-June.

This will be the second shopping mall to open in the Gaza Strip in a year. Last July, Palestinians opened a two-story mall that includes a supermarket, international clothing stores, a food court, beauty products, a children’s playground and a restaurant.
The modern three-story complex is the first of its kind in the Palestinian territories, said Ehab al-Issawi, executive director of the Al-Hayat Tureed Company that owns the mall.
Where exactly is the money coming from for this shopping mall and for the shopping that will be done in it?

8 comments:

  1. The money comes from taxpayers who have absolutely no say in what their governments do with the monies confiscated from them.
    That aside, I await with growing anticipation the coming of the Arab Winter - "If spring comes, can winter be far behind? ", or something like that.

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  2. http://www.independent.ie/opinion/columnists/kevin-myers/kevin-myers-arab-christians-dont-see-events-in-middle-east-as-liberating-2659518.html

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  3. Robert,
    Thank you for that link - it is an absolute "keeper", definitely to be resurrected in a few months time. An absolutely fascinating dissection of our leaders and MSMs tappy-lapping down the road to disaster, though their newly donned "Arab Spring" blinkers obviously hide such points of view from them.

    And though I thought I knew a little bit about the Middle East, I honestly never knew or even imagined this:

    "This is a continent-sized entity of more than 200 million people without a single car factory, a single computer plant, a single aircraft manufacturer, a single IT R&D faculty, or a single world-class university, and which manages to translate just 330 foreign books annually into Arabic [...]"

    I think that information only goes to prove Churchill was absolutely correct well over a century ago and nothing, absolutely nothing has changed since then:
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_River_War

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  4. The River War is about Sudan, which is not really in the Middle East.When it came to Iraq Churchill had a different opinion and his activity there as Secretary of State were fairly disastrous. But then, what can one expect from a politician who asks T.E.Lawrence for advice.

    But thank your for the link, Robert. Kevin Myers is one of the best journalists around. Always hits the right spot. There are some truly horrible stories coming out from Egypt about what is happening to the Copts.

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  5. Sudan, Middle East, Far East or now even the West, I was referring to Churchill's views on Muslims wherever they might be. His words tie in with the facts given in the article.

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  6. But not to Churchill's actions in Iraq, clearly. Made a bad situation worse.

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  7. Who was talking about Churchill in Iraq? OK, I made a mistake in not cutting and pasting the quote I was referring to and lazily posted a link instead. This leads you to introduce spurious items which have nothing to do with the subject post, though I suspect in your mind it means you are right. Right about what? (Rhetorical)

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  8. "Where exactly is the money coming from for this shopping mall and for the shopping that will be done in it?"

    I think I found the answer.
    The following are the 2010-2011 world donations to the PA, as presented in the Al-Hayyat Al-Jadida newspaper, and in the special report of the Mabat Palestinian Media Watch organization:

    EU - 158.5 [million?] Euro,
    Britain - 60 million pounds sterling,
    India - 10 million USD,
    Norway - 53 million USD,
    France - 19 million Euro,
    World Bank - 40 million,
    Japan - 18.5 million,
    EU - 41.4 million,
    Britain - another 30 million pounds,
    US - 225 million USD,
    Ireland - 1.5 million Euro,
    Japan - 11.9 million USD.
    http://www.virtualjerusalem.com/news.php?Itemid=3730

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