Protest in Beirut against Egypt’s "Wall of Shame" on the border with Gaza.
I want to focus attention on an issue that hasn’t gotten enough press. The Mubarak regime is building a subterranean steel wall on the border with Gaza. Conservative estimates put the depth of the wall at 18 meters (nearly 60 feet). The BBC reports that American engineers designed the wall panels, which were constructed in America.
30-meter-deep holes are being bored into the ground on the Palestinian side of the wall. Egypt will pump salt water from the Mediterranean Sea into the earth to destroy the tunnels – the lifeblood of the besieged Gazan Palestinians. Soil quality will be degraded and the Coastal aquifer, Gaza’s source of potable water, may well be destroyed.
The deranged Obama-Netanyahu-Mubarak cabal seems to be possessed of a biblical rage. Dare to defy the divine edict? We will crush your men, women and children underfoot. Refuse to starve? We will raze your cities, poison your wells, and salt the earth. Their grandiosity – think of it, they’re building an 18-meter-deep steel wall(!) for 11 kilometers – beggars belief, and beggars Gazans.
Protests have erupted across the Arab world and Europe targeting Egyptian embassies and consulates; I attended one yesterday in Beirut. But the Egyptian regime isn’t responsive to popular pressure, so a group of activists here in Lebanon have begun a movement to draw attention to the Egyptian company assembling the wall – Arab Contractors. Our hope is that details emerge, other companies can be targeted. I reported on our first press conference for Electronic Intifada.
We spend so much time on the Zionists in Israel, Egypt and America and their actions today that the big picture sometimes loses focus. The most powerful state in the world – and its regional lackeys – are targeting the people in Gaza for… what? For starvation? For extermination? What is Mr. Obama’s endgame here? Once the tunnels are gone, the land degraded and the water undrinkable… well, then what? I cannot express how I feel. There is no solace in this tragedy.
Ahmed Moor is a Gaza-born Palestinian-American freelance journalist living in Beirut.
