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Thursday, June 23, 2011

Was Israel Purchased or Palestine Stolen?

Too frequently in discussions on the Arab-Israeli conflict are arguments brought to the table when justifying the colonization of Palestine as a "lesser of two evils" when comparisons are presented that describe land attained by violent conquests throughout the ages during the Imperial era.

Too often we hear the same cry against the barbaric rule of the Roman Empire; or the conquering Crusaders marching into Jerusalem with horses "knee-deep in blood".

The frequency of these historic events which illustrate examples of brutal occupation doesn't necessarily make them the standards by which we consider "historical norm" to be the accepted methods of occupation. Moreover, simply by using these examples to fuel the argument for justifying Israeli occupation puts the Zionist methodology within the same category as these archaic forms of conquests.

When focussing on the matter of colonialism however, there is a grave difference between the British colonization verses the current Zionist occupation. Even though Britain colonized most of the surrounding regions, just as the Ottoman Empire did before them, the colonies were still identified as Arab land with the presence of British military rule. Occupation itself is not illegal under the Fourth Geneva Convention, however the Jewish state has not adhered to the rules of the Occupying Power's responsibility under these laws, engaging in ongoing land confiscations, home demolitions, expanding settlement construction, systematic deportations, civilian displacements, residency revocation, water resource reallocation, economic strangulation, child imprisonment, violent checkpoint misconduct, border blockades, airspace "no-fly" restrictions, and maritime seaport blockades. All these impositions have been deemed violations of international law with regards to the rules of occupation.

In order to justify these actions, some traditionalists like to claim that the Jews were the original inhabitants of the region so it is their "right" to do as they please with "their" land. However they weren't the original people. They lived there 3000 years ago when David conquered Goliath, then his son Solomon created a kingdom, then a subsequent civil war ensued two generations later between Judea and Samara, and Nebuchadnezzar conquered and exiled the Jews to Babylon shortly after that. Four generations: A moment in the history of Jerusalem. People lived before the Jewish rule and people lived after the Jewish rule. One cannot compare four generations with one thousand years of Arab habitation.

Starting with the original rallying cry of Zionism - thought up by Israel Zangwill and adopted by Theodor Herzl - the following statement was used from the original Christian quote: "a people without land for a land without people" and that was the first Zionist lie. They knew full well that the region was not a land without people. In fact, they had sent a delegation of Rabbis to inspect the territory. The message that the Rabbis sent back was "the bride is beautiful, but she is married to another man". From the very beginning, the Zionists knew that their entire project was based on fabrication.

During the time when Palestine was under British authority, land ownership within each sub-district (as shown in the figure) shows a significant percentage of Palestinian Arab ownership compared to the Jewish people and the British forces.

The cause and effects of the British Mandate when permission was given for a mass Jewish immigration in the 1930's as a gesture of appreciation for Rothschild's funding of WWI, caused great unrest throughout the entire region. While early explanations of the Palestinian refugee crisis alleged that Arab leaders urged them to flee in radio broadcasts so that they wouldn't get in the way of attacks from Jewish forces, there was no evidence to support this. At the time British and US intelligence, as well as the BBC, were monitoring Arabic language radio broadcasts in the region and none of them recorded exhortations to flee.

Palestinians today still consist of the largest population of refugees in the world totalling 4.3 million as confirmed by the UNHCR, and are displaced in Syria, Jordan and Lebanon. To claim that they sold their land to become refugees is a complete misrepresentation of historical events.

There are claims that suggest the Jews purchased 10% of the land prior to the mass migration in the late 1930s / early 1940s, and there is in fact evidence to suggest that 10% of the population in the region that was called Palestine were of Jewish heritage; however that still does not include the rest of the land that was either unilaterally declared the state of Israel, annexed, or occupied. Israel's PR campaigns do not clarify the specific details of the amount of the land that was actually purchased compared to the remainder that was taken by force.

Tuesday, June 21, 2011

Is the theory of the Nile to the Euphrates a realistic possibility?

Regarding a recent article called In defense of reason, not Israel by Amr Yossef, an Adjunct Professor of Political Science, there are a few points that can be made about his comments.

Most of his article is very well written and provides a realistic perspective of the situation between Israel and Egypt especially when considering that there are many conspiracy theories regarding the two nations that provide an inaccurate outlook on their relationship. That is because they are exactly what the name suggests: "theories" without tangible evidence or without factual analysis to support any of the accusations mentioned.

However, there is one vital note that Amy Yossef makes that needs to be examined carefully.
"Israel is not interested in a territorial expansion that would go far beyond its capabilities."
This statement is absolutely correct, and as the world witnessed in the events after the six day invasion of 1967, Israel clearly could not defend and maintain the newly occupied territories. The reality is that it wasn't ready to occupy Egypt's Sinai, Lebanon's south, Syria's Golan Heights, and the entire Palestinian territories comprising of the West Bank, Gaza strip, and East Jerusalem because it provided an economic strain on the state especially at such an early stage of its establishment. .

The problem with this statement though is that it does not rule out the fact that the region is actually witnessing territorial expansion and annexation within East Jerusalem and the West Bank today that has not ceased since those six critical days.

One can safely say that almost 45 years on, East Jerusalem and the West Bank are definitely within Israel's capability to annex, otherwise current settlement constructions would not be occurring.

While the quick adolescent approach to occupation proved to be a failure, the more mature and steady approach to increasing the Israeli Empire has proven to be extremely successful, especially when, as Amr Yossef put it, "Israel is satisfied with the current status-quo", and no peace with the Palestinians will help Israel continuously expand.

What no one has asked is whether or not Israel has actually defined a limit to the ever-growing expanding territory. There is no evidence to suggest that Israel will stop at the West Bank and East Jerusalem especially when the state has been internationally condemned for annexing regions within these territories in the first place.

If the Israeli government simply cannot abide by International Law to halt the current illegal activity of expanding its territory, there is no evidence to suggest that there is any limit at all. This raises issues on whether or not a reason to prove the theory of the Greater Israel being from the Nile to the Euphrates is relevant, but rather that a counter to this theory is necessary when considering Israel's current behaviour.

As Israel's economy grows and their military strength increases, there is nothing to suggest they wouldn't try to continue to expand on more Arab land within their "capabilities" so long as they have the ability to do so.


The only thing that has in fact changed since 1967 is that Israel has learnt that conquering its surrounding land in only six days is simply not a sustainably reality.

Wednesday, June 15, 2011

Are the Palestinians willing to have peace?

Since the beginning of the Oslo Accords in 1993 the PLO had agreed to a cease fire in order to recognize a two-state solution surrounding the original Armistice Agreement's Green Line which is widely known today as the pre-1967 borders.

While they eventually only achieved a self-governing entity, the Palestinian Authority, they did agree that the issues of settlement activity in West Bank and Gaza would be finalised leading on from the Oslo Accords. Considering that there weren't too many advantages to this agreement they were content with the decision, although no concessions were actually made by Israel to retreat from the existing settlements which were part of the negotiations. Instead, during the protracted interim period of the Oslo process, they began new settlements in the occupied territories, expanded existing settlements and constructed a network of bypass roads to enable Israeli settlers to travel from their settlements to Israel proper without passing through Palestinian-inhabited areas. These projects were understood by most Palestinians as marking out territory that Israel sought to annex in the final agreements. [The Oslo Accords]

Radicals had emerged - namely Hamas and Jihad - in reaction to these settlement expansions, and since these groups saw no serious commitment toward an Israeli recognition of a Palestinian state, they decided it was a declaration of war and subsequently based their own charters on a similar concept.

Despite these issues the negotiations were at large still being pursued. However once Netanyahu took office, the Oslo Accords completely failed because he fundamentally opposed it.

In the following years, the Arabs had also accepted the 2000 Clinton Parameters, the Arab Peace Initiative endorsed by Saudi Arabia in 2002, then the Geneva Accords of 2003, and again re-established the Arab Peace Initiative in 2007 all of which described the two-state solution, and yet the settlement expansions still continued. [Why two states]

Following Hamas’ victory in the 2006 Palestinian legislative elections, Ismail Haniyeh, the newly elected prime minister, sent a dispatch to U.S. President George W. Bush, asking to be recognized and offering a long-term truce with Israel and the establishment of a border on the lines of 1967. His message, as a similar one sent to the Israeli authorities, remained unanswered.
Hamas: We’ll recognize Israel within '67 borders

The Hamas charter was also debunked. It no longer became the same militant resistant group that was responsible for the intifada that began with Sheikh Ahmed Yassin.
Hamas drops call for destruction of Israel from manifesto:
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2006/jan/12/israel

“The differences between the party’s platform and the Islamic Charter [of Hamas] do not represent an attempt at deception or the empty and unconsidered use of words. They are a product of a change and modification of lines of thought as a part of the process by which Hamas has become a political movement.”

Regardless of their militant past, Hamas clearly showed they were willing to be committed towards opening dialogues for negotiation which in effect would implement a cease fire in order to have peaceful negotiations regarding the two-state process. Incidentally, subsequent cease fires were in fact honored by Hamas, then consequently broken by Israel as is thoroughly described in the following article: Reigniting Violence: How Do Ceasefires End?

During this time, the US Bush Administration and Israel branded Hamas a terrorist organisation placing them on their "hit list" regardless of their commitment and actions towards peaceful negotiations. This significantly affected peace talks because neither government wanted to negotiate with the elected party of Gaza even when considering that history had shown in Arafat's PLO that negotiations were a very real possibility.

Arafat's letter to Yitzhak Rabin following the Oslo Accords:
September 9, 1993

Yitzhak Rabin
Prime Minister of Israel

Mr. Prime Minister,
The signing of the Declaration of Principles marks a new era...I would like to confirm the following PLO commitments:
The PLO recognizes the right of the State of Israel to exist in peace and security.
The PLO accepts United Nations Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338.
The PLO commits itself... to a peaceful resolution of the conflict between the two sides and declares that all outstanding issues relating to permanent status will be resolved through negotiations... the PLO renounces the use of terrorism and other acts of violence and will assume responsibility over all PLO elements and personnel in order to assure their compliance, prevent violations and discipline violators... the PLO affirms that those articles of the Palestinian Covenant which deny Israel's right to exist, and the provisions of the Covenant which are inconsistent with the commitments of this letter are now inoperative and no longer valid.
Consequently, the PLO undertakes to submit to the Palestinian National Council for formal approval the necessary changes in regard to the Palestinian Covenant.

Sincerely,
Yasser Arafat.
Chairman: The Palestine Liberation Organization.
Instead, Israel continued to expand with more and more settlements and broken cease fires.
Ultimately they chose war instead of peace, and Hamas replied in kind with their new Al-Qassam rockets. Whenever an F16 fighter jet made a flyover and shelled Gaza's infrastructure, Hamas responded.

In 2011, however, Hamas managed to state that they would still be willing to accept a Palestinian state within the pre-1967 borders and within the Green Lines, even though they were less optimistic about this recognition as described in the following article: Hamas will accept the 1967 Borders and a Truce with Israel

PR campaigns work well to avert attention away from these "trivial" details.

Despite all this evidence however, the above notes only describe the political situation between governing bodies. More notably, the voice of the Palestinian people and their fundamental stance on the situation still outweighs any political commitment made by Hamas or the PA. A more accurate judgement to decide whether or not Arabs genuinely want peace would be needed to illustrate their legitimacy against Israeli claims that Palestinians "do not want to recognize the state of Israel" or worse, that they "want to drive all Jews into the sea".

When looking at this from a practical perspective, populations cannot sustain their livelihood in an ongoing conflict. That is why the Palestinians marched against Hamas and Fatah during the Arab Spring before the two factions decided to create the Unity party as an interim to allow the people to vote once again for a unifying organisation.

There have been numerous polls made to understand the Palestinian perspective, and the general consensus is very different to what the Israeli propaganda like to portray in order to justify their own need for self-determination above all other matters:

  • 70% of Palestinians opposed to the launching of rockets into Israel from Gaza
  • 75% believing that military escalation would not serve them, only Israel
  • 54.8% prefer the two-state solution: an Israeli state and a Palestinian state while most others either don't know, refuse to answer, or are for a bi-nation.
  • 67.5% are in favor of concluding a peace agreement with Israel while 24.8% are in favor of a truce with Israel

[http://www.pcpo.org/]

The above information provides ample evidence to support the notion that Palestinians in general do prefer peace over war whether it is part of the common people's perspective or of their own leaders and representatives.

With this, what more would be needed to convince the Israeli government and its people that Arabs are willing to begin dialogues on the two-state solution? All that is required is an equal commitment by Israel to show they are genuinely willing to begin talks, and this can be proven by agreeing to a complete halt on its pursuit to de-legitimize the concept of a Palestinian state.

Ultimately, that means permanent settlement freezes; not the temporary 10-month plans that only apply for "new" construction sites in the West Bank alone while ignoring both the new constructions in East Jerusalem and the general expansions of existing settlements throughout the entire Palestinian Territories.

Putting this into context, Israel has never once put a complete halt on their land-grab, and that in effect implies they have never once shown a willingness to recognize the self-determination and sovereignty of a Palestinian state.

Monday, June 13, 2011

Letter of response to Obama's Speech

Friday, May 20, 2011

Dear Obama,

Your speech was very informative in raising awareness of our story of freedom, and as an Arab I very much appreciated it. It was as “hopeful” as the speech you gave in Cairo two years ago.

I could only truly falter one comment in an almost perfect speech. You mentioned that Palestine should be a “sovereign non-militarized state”. I foresee this proposal would be an exceptionally unpopular card to play in negotiations. If it is a matter of "trust", do you also believe that we as Arabs would trust Israel to be the only military force? Ironically, this is the current status-quo that cannot provide stability, and you mentioned the problem of instability in the very same speech.

Israel has shown time and time again that they cannot handle situations in a non-violent manner.
There is the matter for them to adhere to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons as well as the subject on illegal use of white-phosphorous chemical weapons.

Could you not propose to make them non-militarised as well? That would most likely mean that international security would be required in the region until true stability is reached on either side when they are BOTH able to provide a legitimate defence force. That would definitely provide a peaceful solution for BOTH to enjoy.

This would of course also mean ownership of responsibility with regards to the U.S. foreign aid which is used specifically for the Israeli war machine that should be halted just as urgently as the illegal settlements you mentioned in your speech.

If there is no pure intention of “courage” to act on your powerful words, then it is otherwise a lovely display of smoke and mirrors.

Arabs are not entirely naïve and I hope respect and dignity will be shown to provide a level playing field in which both Arabs and Jews can enjoy the harmony they once experienced many centuries before colonisation plagued their lands.

I'm sure as a leader of an Independent country, you would most definitely agree.

Regards,
Adel Helal

Sent to the White House via http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact


RE:
The White House, Washington
June 10, 2011

Dear Friend:

Thank you for writing.  I have heard from many Americans concerned about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and I appreciate your perspective.  I remain committed to a sustained diplomatic effort to promote peace in the region, because achieving a secure and lasting peace is critical not only for Israelis and Palestinians, but also for their neighbors and the United States. 

Resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict demands our immediate and continued attention.  For generations, the conflict has taken a terrible human toll, and continued instability in the Middle East makes us all less safe.  We must open a more hopeful chapter in the story of the Holy Land.

Through comprehensive and sustained efforts, we can achieve the goal of two states:  a Jewish state of Israel and a viable Palestinian state, living side by side in peace and security.  This approach requires working with Israelis, Palestinians, and other stakeholders over the long term, and my Administration will do just that.

I encourage you to join me online and read more about my Administration's approach to this complex issue and other critical foreign policy matters at:  www.whitehouse.gov/agenda/foreign_policy.

Again, thank you for sharing your thoughts. 

Sincerely,

Barack Obama

Sunday, June 12, 2011

Civilian Casualties: Palestinian / Israeli Conflict

Based on the information provided from the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitatian Affairs online database, the data was exported and generated as reports as shown below.

The data compiled includes casualties caused by direct Israeli / Palestinian conflict, internal Palestinian conflict, indirectly related to Israeli Palestinian conflict, reckless handling of explosives, and disputed responsibility within Israel, West Bank and Gaza strip.













Tuesday, June 7, 2011

Western interests in the Middle East

US foreign aid sent to Israel currently stands at a total of $3.6 billion annually which is the largest foreign aid given to any country in the world. With regards to budget for military aid alone, the following figures have been proposed for the next few years:


Military Aid to Israel FY2009-FY2018
  • FY2009 $2.55 billion
  • FY2010 $2.77 billion
  • FY2011 $3.00 billion
  • FY2012-2018 $3.09 billion annually
Source: U.S. State Department

This strong US support has been maintained for many decades and goes well beyond any Presidential administration. It is too strong an alliance for anyone to challenge, and as the Obama administration found, it is extremely hard to put pressure on Israel with a lobby seemingly embedded at the core of Congress.

This "Israel First" lobby is a result of a deal that the two nations struck when the US and Israel acknowledged they had common interests vital for strategic power in the Middle East that stemmed primarily from the 1967 Israeli invasions. This event was quickly followed by the significant influx of funds to help the new state thrive in military and agriculture.

Allowing Israeli control of the region results in the following two strategic benefits:
  1. For the US: Instability in the region would lessen the threat of the Arab and Muslim world on the West. Arabs have two extremely important commodities that could potentially cause serious ramifications that would spread throughout the globe as had happened in the 1950's with the Suez Canal crisis and the embargo of the largest oil deposits in the world. Sanctions on either of these would give enormous power to any Arab demands.
  2. For Israel: The Jews can fulfill their ancient religious beliefs of a Greater Israel and ultimately their prophetic "Promised Land".
Despite these advantages, Obama realises that persistent strain on the region may cause the bubble of power to burst and the "Arab Spring" revolutions have shown a potential breach in the stability of their dominance. However as Obama has realised this, his attempts to draw it to Netanyahu's attention has been spat back in his face.

The tension between Netanyahu and Obama from their back and forth dialogue was a result of the fear that the Arab revolutions might actually spread to Israel's occupation of Palestinian Territories.

Obama's Middle East speech was more an urgent cry to Israel to show some flexibility to their violent occupation, in the fear that Israeli rule could potentially be ousted just like Egypt's powerful dictator Mubarak was ousted - who incidentally received the second largest US foreign aid in the world totaling $2 billion annually to help silence the masses regarding the genocide occurring on the other side of their border.

In the eyes of the Israelis, his speech was a minor hiccup in an otherwise unblemished friendship.

Ultimately, this deadly alliance with the US government has helped Israel stand uncontested with regards to the ongoing land confiscations, home demolitions, settlement expansion, systematic deportations, civilian displacements, violent checkpoint misconduct, water resource reallocation, residency revocation, border blockades, airspace "no-fly" zones, and maritime seaport isolation, regardless of any condemnation coming from the International Community requesting Israel to adhere to the Fourth Geneva Convention.

Complete support for Israel provides a significant boost to America's dominance internationally, however it is seriously affecting national responsibilities. It basically comes down to what would be considered more important for the United States: being a super-power, or providing their own citizens with a better lifestyle.

Priority on the latter seems to be the lesser of the two.

Obama is looking at solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from the wrong angle. If the US pulls out funding for this balance of power, then the two parties might actually approach each other on a level playing field, and negotiations could then be taken seriously on both sides. At the moment it is just a staged formality. Israel is getting exactly what they want so why would they need to negotiate?

One would seriously doubt that a few blind Al-Qassam rockets over the borders are a threat against Israel, who incidentally is one of the top 10 most powerful military forces on the planet possessing state of the art tanks, Apache choppers, F16 fighter jets, anti-missile "Iron Dome", remote-controlled drones, heat-seeking missiles, white-phosphorous chemical weapons, nuclear weapons, and $3 Billion to spend on a force that provides the state with unlimited ammunition. Israel could quite literally take over Gaza, the West Bank, Egypt, Syria, and Lebanon in a matter of days if they decided to. Lets face it, they actually did invade those regions in just six days in 1967.

It is a pretty hard PR game to play to try and convince the world that Israel is trying to "defend" itself from being driven out to sea.

Unfortunately what has happened now is that this generous foreign aid has been taken for granted by the Israeli government, and they are not afraid to express their disapproval of US opinions if anything but their own unilateral policies are accepted. The US has no choice but to submit to the overwhelming pro-Israeli support in Congress.
"Since the peace process began with the Oslo accord of 1993, the number of Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank has risen from around 110,000 to more than 300,000. The government of Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu refused to agree even to the extension of a temporary halt, despite an offer of jet fighters worth billions of dollars. American aid has been running at around $8.5 million a day for many years but obviously doesn’t buy much influence."
[Bernd Debusmann - Reuters]
"For far too long many American officials involved in Arab-Israeli peace-making have acted as Israel’s attorney, catering for and coordinating with the Israelis at the expense of successful peace negotiations. If the United States wants to be an honest and effective broker ... then surely it can have only one client: the pursuit of a solution that meets the requirements of both sides."
[Aaron David Miller - Middle East negotiator and adviser, US State Department - Washington Post 2005]

Thursday, June 2, 2011

Netanyahu Exposed

The speech Obama gave last month to the Middle East was spoken perfectly if one were to dissect it using lexical analysis. The structure, tone and context of the speech, whilst trying to appease two cultures with a deep-seeded, bitter conflict was actually admirable. But that is as far as it goes because ultimately a US president cannot give more than what Obama gave: a speech.

There was admiration in his words as he bounced around the joy of witnessing history in the making with regards to the freedom fighters of Egypt and Tunisia, then a stern reminder of the failure of terrorism, and then there was a teasing and a dancing about of his words while trying to work his way through stating what has always been discussed for many years with Israel, and even though nothing new was mentioned, what made the speech successful from an Arab perspective is that it called Netanyahu's bluff.

It exposed him for what he really is, a manipulator of his own words. Netanyahu has always been calling out for a two-state solution as being the "only solution for peace" because he knows very well that a single-state, multi-cultured, purely democratic country involving a majority Arab and minority Jewish population would vote out and subsequently end the Jewish leadership and the identity of a Jewish state entirely.

What this speech showed, as obvious as the call for a two-state solution was, is that Obama’s call to action for Netanyahu to begin implementing such a notion could not possibly be carried out by the leader of Israel. After all, he has a Promised Land to fulfil for his people.

His immediate response by meeting with Obama to settle his "differences" proved that he really wants one thing that can no longer be denied through his PR campaigns and his "contempt" for the status quo: Arab land completely annexed from the Sea to the Jordan River, and nothing left for the Palestinians. What he fails to hide is that he has no intention to consider a viable "defensible" state for the Palestinians because frankly he doesn’t really care. His subsequent speeches to provide "clarification" of what Obama "really" meant never once mentioned the best interests for the Palestinians, which naturally would be a topic of conversation if a leader of a democracy wanted a sustainable region for all people to thrive in.

Although there will be no obvious progress following the back and forth of the Obama/Netanyahu speeches, the exposure of the lies that seeps through the very pores of the Israeli Prime Minister was there for all to see.

Lo and behold, once the penny dropped there was no looking back, and the result of this was the exposure of the Likud Platform, which looks strikingly similar in intent to the Hamas Charter:

Likud Platform
http://www.knesset.gov.il/elections/knesset15/elikud_m.htm

Wednesday, June 1, 2011

Why doesn't Egypt annex Gaza to provide Palestinians a reasonable life?

This question was actually asked on Quora.

Simply put, Egypt, like all the other surrounding Arab countries, do not want to remove Palestinian Identity. It is a concept that even the Palestinians accept. They must not be a forgotten people. Their self-determination is just as great as Israeli self-determination. One could ask the same question as to why Israel wouldn't agree to a multi-cultural, purely democratic, non-racial single state that is enjoyed by both people in the region - after all, Arabs and Jews shared the land amongst themselves for many centuries prior to European colonisation. The answer that would most likely be found would be no different than that of the Palestinians.

This identity is in contradiction to the statement that Golda Meir made when she believed that Palestinians didn't exist. This rhetoric is untrue, because they have always existed and were described as Philistinieen (arabic phonetic). The English translation of that is Palestinians, so naturally the Brits named their colonial region Palestine after the indigenous people that lived there for centuries.

Egyptians know this history well.

The very implication of annexation is an immoral act of delegitimizing a people of their identity and of their rightful home wherein you will find a critical distinction between that and the notion of colonisation as was the status of the region when it was Mandate Palestine. While the British occupiers had control of Palestine between WWI and WWII - much to the dislike of the Arabs - they did not create settlements over existing homes, nor did they displace or deport the inhabitants of the land. Their presence was purely a military presence, and while there were checkpoints, Palestinians were able to travel and trade freely between each city without restrictions.

Based on the above information, a more resonable question would be why Egypt wouldn't colonize the Gaza Strip and provide Palestinians living there with a resonable life? The answer to that is simpler still: That was in fact the status during 1948-67 where Egypt provided military protection for the people of Gaza while promising those who where displaced from their homes the Right of Return. Never at any time did Egypt feel the need to remove the Palestinian's identity in addition to those who were made refugees. Unfortunately with their blind hatered and zeal, there was no vision in restoring that identity and they subsequently lost legitimacy as protectors of these people.

Having said that, hypothetically if either annexation or colonisation were in fact a possibility today, it would definately be a contentious topic regarding the Rafa border crossing that Israel would no doubt want a cruical role in playing a part of. Currently Israel's intention is to demilitarize a newly formed State of Palestine which is ironic in its own right because this is in fact the current status quo, and it leaves a large blur in the definition of sovereignty.

No doubt Israel would want to ensure its "safety" by trying to prevent the border from being continuously open for free trade and movement at the Rafa crossing. Israelis would most likely feel that it is in their own interest to be the state responsible for "colonising" Gaza with their demilitarization edict to complete their blockade around the entire strip.

That is of course if they don't have another friendly dictator by the time Egypt have their civil elections.