<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes"?><oembed><version><![CDATA[1.0]]></version><provider_name><![CDATA[Occupied Palestine | فلسطين]]></provider_name><provider_url><![CDATA[https://occupiedpalestine.wordpress.com]]></provider_url><author_name><![CDATA[occupiedpalestine]]></author_name><author_url><![CDATA[https://occupiedpalestine.wordpress.com/author/hajarhajar/]]></author_url><title><![CDATA[For the Love of Egypt: When Besieged Palestinians&nbsp;Danced]]></title><type><![CDATA[link]]></type><html><![CDATA[<p>&nbsp;</p>
<table border="0" cellspacing="1" cellpadding="1" width="100%" align="center">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>
<table border="0" cellspacing="1" cellpadding="1" width="400" align="center">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td align="middle">&nbsp;</p>
<p style="text-align:center;"><a href="http://www.palestinechronicle.com/view_article_details.php?id=16762"><img src='https://occupiedpalestine.files.wordpress.com/2011/04/1301607081egypt_gaza_rally_images.jpg' alt='' /></a></p>
<p>&nbsp;</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="caption_text" align="middle">Gaza was Cairo, Egypt was Palestine.  (Aljazeera)</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="normal_text" style="padding-top:10px;">&nbsp;</p>
<p><strong>By Ramzy Baroud</strong></p>
<p>A dear friend of mine from Gaza told me that he hadn&#8217;t slept for days. &#8220;I am  so worried about Egypt, I have only been feeding on cigarettes and coffee.&#8221; 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.</p>
<p>The siege on Gaza – and on the whole of Palestine &#8211; 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 &#8211; the bond that united Egypt to Palestine runs much  deeper than the sins of a senile dictator, or even a terrible siege.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>Al-Nakba represented heartbreak to the collective conscious of Arabs, but  Palestinians and Egyptians were affected the most.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.<br />
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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.”</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p><em>&#8211; Ramzy Baroud (</em><a href="http://www.ramzybaroud.net/"><em>www.ramzybaroud.net</em></a><em>) is an  internationally-syndicated columnist and the editor of PalestineChronicle.com.  His latest book is My Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza&#8217;s Untold Story (Pluto  Press, London), available on Amazon.com.</em></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td height="35"><a class="contribution" style="cursor:pointer;" href="contribution.php"><strong><em>If you like this article, please consider making a  contribution to the Palestine Chronicle.</em></strong></a></td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p><a href="http://www.palestinechronicle.com/view_article_details.php?id=16762">Source</a></p>
]]></html><thumbnail_url><![CDATA[https://occupiedpalestine.files.wordpress.com/2011/04/1301607081egypt_gaza_rally_images.jpg?fit=440%2C330]]></thumbnail_url><thumbnail_width><![CDATA[]]></thumbnail_width><thumbnail_height><![CDATA[]]></thumbnail_height></oembed>