On the 5th of September, Al Jazeera reported that according to former Palestinian border officials and travelers, Egyptian officers are asking desperate Palestinians from Gaza for bribes of up to $10,000 to leave the besieged Strip through the Rafah Crossing. According to a former Palestinian official working for the Crossing Authority which oversees the Rafah terminal, nearly half a million dollars was taken by Egyptian officers from Palestinians over the course of just 2 days last year in exchange for permission to travel to Egypt. As a result of the crippling siege imposed on the Gaza Strip by Israel since 2007, the Rafah Crossing remained the only lifeline for Muslims from the besieged enclave to the outside world. However, since the military coup in Egypt in 2013 when the brutal, murderous dictator, General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi took power in the country, extreme restrictions were placed on the crossing, with the border rarely being opened. The heartless Egyptian regime even blocked the underground tunnels between the Strip and Egypt that were being used to bring food, fuel, and other essential materials needed for the people. According to a spokesman of Gisha Legal Center for Freedom of Movement, there are 30,000 cases of people in Gaza who need to urgently travel abroad for humanitarian reasons, many for medical care.
Comment:
The eight year-long strangulating siege by the ruthless Zionist state has crippled Gaza and devastated the lives of its population. And yet despite this, the conscienceless Egyptian regime is not only exacerbating the human catastrophe affecting the Muslims of Gaza by blocking the only exit route from the Strip, its officers are unashamedly profiteering from the utter misery of its people. The siege on Gaza alongside the blockade of the Rafah Crossing has caused a chronic shortage of fuel, clean water, medicines, medical equipment and reconstruction material required to re-build homes, schools, hospitals and infrastructure destroyed by the Israeli onslaughts on the Strip, including damaged sewage pipes, which has caused sewage to seep into the water supply. Oxfam has stated that less than 10% of the 12,000 homes destroyed in the Zionist state’s 2014 war on Gaza have been rebuilt two years on. 75,000 Palestinians remain homeless, while some are living in the ruins of demolished homes. Entire neighbourhoods are without water, destroyed hospitals have not been rebuilt, and 80% of the population of Gaza rely on international humanitarian aid. Indeed, Gaza’s infrastructure is so damaged that a UN report last year stated that if current trends persist, the Strip would become “uninhabitable” by 2020.
The Egyptian regime as well as other regimes in the Muslim world are the frontline guards and supporters of the Jewish entity and its open-air prison of Gaza. Turkey’s leadership for example struck a deal with Jewish entity in July, normalizing relationships and trade with this terrorist state, failing to even demand lifting of the siege. Furthermore, the governments of the Muslim world are more than happy to drop bombs on the Muslim children of Yemen, Syria, Iraq, Pakistan and other Muslim lands without hesitation to serve the interests of their Western colonial masters while they have not moved an inch to use those same fighter jets and weapons to defend and liberate the children of Palestine from their living nightmare. Indeed, these treacherous cowardly regimes who have abandoned this Deen and this Ummah, are the reason for the Jewish entity’s ‘boldness’ to continue its occupation of this blessed land of Al-Isra Wal Miraj, its ‘boldness’ to send its soldiers and citizens to defile the sacred Al-Aqsa Mosque, and its ‘boldness’ to kill Palestinian children in cold blood without an ounce of fear of the repercussions.
The only path for this Ummah to liberate itself from occupation and tyranny, and regain its former glory is to liberate itself urgently from the rule of these regimes and their repressive non-Islamic systems and to establish in their place, the Khilafah based on the method of the Prophethood. It is under this glorious system that Allah gave victory after victory to the great generals of Islam against their enemies – generals such as Salahuddin Ayyubi who fought in the name of Islam and to liberate and defend its lands with no fear of the size or strength of the armies they faced for they knew that Allah (swt) was their supporter and protector. This is why Salahuddin mobilized his army without hesitation to liberate Al-Sham from its occupiers, the Christian Crusaders, despite knowing that he would face the huge armies of France, Germany and Britain combined, who had united to fight the Muslims. And indeed, Allah gave the Muslims victory in this battle, giving them His Support from means they could not even imagine, for they fought for His sake and to re-establish the authority of His Deen in the Blessed Land. We saw for example, that the German army initially numbered around 100,000 when it marched towards Jerusalem, but Allah took the life of their King, Frederick Barbarossa during the journey, causing many in the ranks to become disheartened and return home. Large numbers of soldiers also returned to Germany in anticipation of the upcoming Imperial election, while many of those who remained were afflicted with disease, such that the army was reduced to a few thousand frail and weakened men by the time it approached Al-Sham. Indeed, this is a great lesson for those who believe that the establishment of the Khilafah or the liberation of occupied Muslim lands is impossible today, arguing that the states who oppose the return of Islam are too strong and powerful. They forget that those who struggle to establish this Deen have an invincible weapon – the Support of the Lord of the Worlds!
وَلِلَّهِ ٱلۡعِزَّةُ وَلِرَسُولِهِۦ وَلِلۡمُؤۡمِنِينَ وَلَـٰكِنَّ ٱلۡمُنَـٰفِقِينَ لَا يَعۡلَمُونَ
“And to Allah belongs all Might, and to His Messenger and to the believers, but the hypocrites know not.”
(Al-Munafiqun: 8)
Dr. Nazreen Nawaz
Director of the Women’s Section in the Central Media Office of Hizb ut Tahrir