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For the Love of Egypt:
When Besieged Palestinians Danced
By Ramzy Baroud
Al-Jazeerah, CCUN, April 4, 2011
A dear friend of mine from Gaza told me that he hadn’t slept
for days. “I am so worried about Egypt, I have only been feeding on
cigarettes and coffee.” My friend and I talked for hours that day in early
February. We talked about Tahrir Square, about the courage of ordinary
Egyptians and about Hosni Mubarak’s many attempts to co-opt the people’s
revolution. We were so consumed by the turmoil in Egypt that neither of us
even mentioned Gaza. The siege on Gaza – and on the whole of
Palestine - is a constant factor that unites most Palestinians. However,
the genuine solidarity that the people of the Gaza Strip felt when
Egyptians took to the streets on January 25 surpassed even the political
urgency around the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. Ordinary Gazans danced the
night away when Mubarak was removed from power on February 18. Although
lifting the siege is a Palestinian priority, those who raised Egyptian
flags, shed tears and subsisted on coffee and cigarettes for nearly three
weeks were hardly making the connection between the siege and Mubarak.
While Mubarak was loathed to the core – his decision to block the Rafah
border at a critical time victimized thousands - the bond that united
Egypt to Palestine runs much deeper than the sins of a senile dictator, or
even a terrible siege. The story, in fact, starts well before
1948, the year of the Palestinian Nakba. Egypt and Palestine have for long
reflected the state of the other: in defeat and triumph, in despair and
hope. The valiant youth of Egypt are now the harbingers of hope for their
country, for Palestine and for the entire region, although things haven’t
always been so promising. Al-Nakba represented heartbreak to the
collective conscious of Arabs, but Palestinians and Egyptians were
affected the most. In 1948, Arab armies entered into a halfhearted
battle in Palestine. They were under-equipped, with only a limited mandate
provided by self-serving leaderships. Most Palestinian villages were
already depopulated by Zionist militias. The local resistance was
mercilessly smashed, and the roads out of Palestine were filled with weary
refugees. The Arabs were defeated. Ordinary Egyptians fumed as their
Palestinian brethren were humiliated and Palestine was lost. The
defeat in 1948 led to serious introspection in Egyptian society. The
internal crises, the poverty and the lack of social justice could no
longer be ignored. Following the defeat of the Egyptian army in the south
of Palestine, Egypt quickly descended into turmoil, and was on the verge
of revolution. There was little in the way of funds to be channeled to
Gaza’s sizeable refugee population. Much of Egypt’s wealth was squandered
by King Farouk on his own family. Indeed, the misery in Gaza was an
extension of the suffering in Egypt, and in some strange way, the failed
Egyptian military intervention in southern Palestine had much to do with
the revolution that followed in Egypt in 1952. Gamal
Abdel-Nasser, who toppled the monarchy and became Egypt’s president, was
an officer in the Egyptian army in 1948. He crossed into Gaza from Sinai
by train in order to defend Palestine. He was stationed in Fallujah, a
village located to the north of Gaza. His unit repeatedly tried to
recapture some of the lost areas in the south, even when military wisdom
pointed to the unfeasibility of such an effort. When it was discovered
that many Egyptian army units were being supplied with purposely-flawed
weapons, shockwaves spread throughout the army, but it was not enough to
demoralize Nasser and a few Egyptian soldiers. They stayed in the Fallujah
pocket for weeks, and their resistance became the stuff of legend.
The building in which Nasser and his unit stayed still stands in today’s
Israel. It is surrounded by fences, like a surrealistic piece of living
art. Nasser returned to Egypt after a territorial swap – Fallujah for the
small town of Beit Hanoun, north of Gaza, which was under Israeli control
at the time. Bitterness, anger and grief accompanied him on his way back
to Cairo, also through Gaza. Nasser marched to Cairo, and in 1952,
along with a few army officers, he overthrew the king and his government.
Palestine was cited by Nasser as a key reason behind his rebellion. The
defeat of Palestine had signified all the ills that afflicted Egypt under
the King and his royal family. Palestinians, especially those in
Gaza, saw in Nasser a hero and liberator. And why wouldn’t they? He was
the man they waved to as he passed by Gaza with his fellow officers
following the Fallujah battle. It was a rare moment of pride and hope when
the officers crossed with their weapons, and huge crowds of refugees
flooded the streets to greet them. The refugees adored Nasser and they
placed framed photographs of him in their tents and mud houses.
This is merely one episode to demonstrate the intrinsic, almost organic
relationship between Egypt and Palestine. The relationship withstood many
difficult events that followed, including the defeat of 1967 (where the
rest of historic Palestine was lost), the death of Nasser, and the signing
of the Camp David agreement between Egypt and Israel. Saddat was an
anomaly, Palestinians argued. Camp David was the exception, they said.
Mubarak was not Egypt. Indeed, the siege was seen as dishonoring a legacy
that Palestinians are determined to remember with fondness. Egypt stands
for shared history, for heroism and sacrifice. On March 24, the
Middle East Monitor reported that Egyptian Foreign Minister, Dr Nabil El
Arabi had sent a message to his counterpart in Gaza a few days earlier. In
the letter he stated that lifting the Israeli-imposed siege of Gaza –
supported by the discredited Mubarak regime – was a priority for the new
government in Cairo: “We are acting to open the border at Rafah and
facilitate an easing of life for the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.”
El Arabi’s position is consistent with the wishes of the Egyptian people,
a position that was necessitated by the historic solidarity between both
nations. It is for similar reasons that Palestinians didn’t get much sleep
for 18 days, a period of waiting that culminated in a rare moment of joy
when Egyptians won their freedom. In that moment, Gaza was Cairo, Egypt
was Palestine, and both peoples were one. - Ramzy Baroud (www.ramzybaroud.net)
is an internationally-syndicated columnist and the editor of
PalestineChronicle.com. His latest book is My Father Was a Freedom
Fighter: Gaza's Untold Story (Pluto Press, London), available on
Amazon.com.
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