Egypt is using water even as it thirsts after it – because it’s using saltwater as a weapon. AL Monitor‘s Mohammed Othman reports on Egypt’s destruction of Palestinian-dug tunnels – and how it’s doubly hitting the Palestinians:
The Egyptian army has been pumping large volumes of Mediterranean Sea waters since Sept. 17 into the buffer zone that it began building two years ago, along 14 kilometers of the Palestinian-Egyptian border. The move is the latest attempt to destroy the tunnels dug by Palestinians under the city of Rafah over the years of the Israeli blockade.
The operation is causing concern for the Rafah border area inhabitants, who say that it will affect their lives there. Farmer Nayef Abu Shallouf, who owns three acres of land less than 300 meters from the Egyptian border, said all the salt water will leave his land briny and destroy his crops. He told Al-Monitor, “In addition to damaging the soil, sinkholes will appear wherever tunnels were dug, with collapses occurring sooner or later.”
As Mohammed explains, this will destroy precious farmland, forcing the farmers off their land – and into cities already short of space for new inhabitants.
Middle East Eye expands on the driving force of this strategy:
But the story goes deeper: the Egyptian government is trying to economically crush Hamas, an ally of the Muslim brotherhood.
Gaza, and its 1.8 million population, has been surviving under an Israeli economic and military blockade for 9 years, suffering increasing poverty and military attacks, leading the UN to announce, in a new report, that Gaza will be made uninhabitable by 2020.
Local police sources in Rafah told MEE on condition of anonymity that Egypt has destroyed 95 percent of supply tunnels connecting Gaza Strip and Egypt. The tunnels were first constructed immediately after Israel’s disengagement from the Sinai Peninsula, as part of the Camp David agreement between Israel and Egypt. But digging got more intense after Israel declared a blockade on Gaza after Hamas won the 2006 Palestinian elections.
Sadly, this has consequences for the Egyptians as well:
Over the past months Egyptian military bulldozers have also destroyed many Egyptian homes to create a buffer zone of at between 500 and 1,000 metres on the Egyptian side, and 1,000 metres. Entire neighborhoods have been flattened being gutted.
Or is it political?
… pro-Sisi Egyptian newspaper Al-Bawaba reported that the aim of this project is to control the area by creating a canal of seawater, turning it into a “development” resource by establishing fish farms.
Assuming they are viable, who benefits? The Egyptian farmers, or the Egyptian military – or some politicians with some pull? It sounds like the farmers are the last in line for a benefit.
