{"id":2543,"date":"2015-10-21T20:10:15","date_gmt":"2015-10-22T01:10:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/?p=2543"},"modified":"2015-10-21T20:10:15","modified_gmt":"2015-10-22T01:10:15","slug":"water-water-water-egypt-ctd-5","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/2015\/10\/21\/water-water-water-egypt-ctd-5\/","title":{"rendered":"Water, Water, Water: Egypt, Ctd"},"content":{"rendered":"

Egypt is using water<\/a> even as it thirsts after it – because it’s using saltwater as a weapon.\u00a0 AL Monitor<\/b><\/i>‘s Mohammed Othman reports <\/a>on Egypt’s destruction of Palestinian-dug tunnels – and how it’s doubly hitting the Palestinians:<\/p>\n

The Egyptian army has been pumping\u00a0large volumes of Mediterranean Sea waters<\/a> since Sept. 17<\/span><\/span>\u00a0into the buffer zone<\/a> that it began building two years ago, along 14 kilometers of the Palestinian-Egyptian border. The move is the latest attempt\u00a0to destroy\u00a0the tunnels dug by Palestinians<\/a> under\u00a0the city of Rafah over\u00a0the years of the Israeli blockade.<\/p>\n

The operation is causing\u00a0concern for\u00a0the Rafah\u00a0border area\u00a0inhabitants, 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\u00a0his land briny and destroy his crops. He told Al-Monitor, \u201cIn addition to damaging the soil, sinkholes will appear wherever tunnels were dug, with collapses occurring sooner or later.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As Mohammed explains, this will destroy precious farmland, forcing the farmers off their land – and into cities already short of space for new inhabitants.<\/p>\n

Middle East Eye <\/b><\/i>expands <\/a>on the driving force of this strategy:<\/p>\n

But the story goes deeper: the Egyptian government is trying to economically crush Hamas, an ally of the Muslim brotherhood.<\/p>\n

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<\/a>, that Gaza will be made uninhabitable by 2020.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s 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.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Sadly, this has consequences for the Egyptians as well:<\/p>\n

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.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Or is it political?<\/p>\n

… 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 \u201cdevelopment\u201d resource by establishing fish farms.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Assuming they are viable, who benefits?\u00a0 The Egyptian farmers, or the Egyptian military – or some politicians with some pull?\u00a0 It sounds like the farmers are the last in line for a benefit.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Egypt is using water even as it thirsts after it – because it’s using saltwater as a weapon.\u00a0 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\u00a0large volumes of Mediterranean Sea waters since Sept. \u2026 Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2543","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2543","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2543"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2543\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2545,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2543\/revisions\/2545"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2543"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2543"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2543"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}