Some Good News About the Gaza Flotilla Crisis?

As tragedies go, the Gaza situation is one of the worst for all sides, so could there possibly be some bright news these days? Here's our very own Matt Berkman's powerful writing on the event before Israel's response.

There is some good news, most significantly the fact that the aid flotilla crisis finally broke Egypt's policy of keeping Gaza's border with Egypt closed. In the past two days, hundreds of families have finally been able to reunite with loved ones they haven't seen for years and do some quick trading for supplies. This alone, in my opinion, could be worth the flotilla crisis because thousands of families will benefit from the sudden burst of oxygen let in from Rafah. Potentially many families who have been surviving on bare bones with public health risks might have a brief but significant improvement as long as the markets are reconnected with the outside world.

Hold on, before a third of you start blasting me with criticism for writing something pro-Gazan, let's get calibrated on the issue.

Hamas is a gang of thugs; their wonderful social services for Palestinians only partly earns them points against their callous habit of attacking Israeli civilians. There is nothing to gain from displacing retaliation off of Israel's military onto innocent people except more hate, more violence, and surely some sort of Karma dark cloud.

Israel's militant leadership, those who argued for the divider wall, the Gaza blockade, and artillery storms on Gazan buildings they knew were full of civilians are equally callous. They also have displaced their anger onto the wrong people many times and created desperation and retaliatory feelings where there may not have been.

As with every war and peace scenario, we have to work hard in our imaginations to overcome the human tendency to group. Within Gaza, for example, there are tens of thousands of people who want peace, want to fish, to farm, to build, to market, and to be friends with their neighbors. These people may only support a political party like Hamas because there is no other political group offering the kind of social service they need to survive. Many of them are bitter at Hamas for killing civilians and wish there was another option. These civilians simply do not deserve to be trapped in a blockade meant to hurt the Hamas leaders. Their hunger and stress only emboldens Hamas, only makes them more bitter at the Israeli government, and so the attack on the largely symbolic and provocative flotilla meant to draw attention to this fact only worsened the situation for Israel's relations with other countries.

Somehow in all this is Egypt, which had been caught in a catch-22 trying to support Palestinians while remaining friendly with Israel for good economic relations with Israel's peaceful side. And so it's almost what Egypt ironically needed when this horrible crisis broke out, an opportunity to allow an opening of the Gaza border.

If you're anti-Hamas and pro-Palestinian, here's a popular petition arguing to that effect against Israel's blockade on Gaza.

By the way, I have spent some time in the West Bank and Israel, including attending meetings discussing how aid could get through the land-based crossings to Gaza. Anyway you slice it, it was abundantly clear to most aid workers that many of the rules limiting supplies going into Gaza were meant not only to prevent security risks, but also to prevent economic recovery.

Photo credit: Daniel J Gerstle (Nablus, West Bank)