The Rafah Crossing has not lost its role completely and will remain an exceptional player in the lives of the people of Gaza, and a bell in our human memory (Al Jazeera)
The seaport is still asking many questions, and of course receiving multiple responses and attempts at answers, none of which include the humanity of the international or regional actor, who identified himself and defined his position in the war over five months on the side of the killers, or - at best - a passive spectator of the massacre.
Intrinsic factors
This article is one of those attempts that seeks an objective reading of the seaport idea.
It is a port that the Gazans have always dreamed of and demanded for years and decades, and the countries granted it to them.
The perpetrators, including the occupation itself, cannot fulfill such a demand as an expression of good intentions towards those killed by them.
Hence, all interpretations that attempt to search for an objective mind in the idea of the port avoid the humanity of the perpetrators, as its absence is proven by actual experience, which is the highest level of scientific proof.
The seaport cannot be separated from Rafah: its expected war, its crossing, and Hamas, which actually owns it.
Rafah: These three factors are essential in the interpretation.
If we assume the port’s connection to the war that the occupation threatens against Rafah, the actors are working to reduce the humanitarian burden of the expected war that they are covering politically and on the ground, but they want it in a way that does not put them in a more narrow moral corner.
Such a war, if it continues its journey towards Rafah, the “drops” of aid dripping from the Rafah crossing will stop completely, and the scene will shift from collective punishment of the population through starvation, to their final killing.
There is a difference between the two.
The Rafah crossing was not opened at all in order for us to search for alternatives to it, but it was like a closed water tap from which drops were dripping that gave life and thirst together, and were sufficient to punish the population collectively with hunger.
As for closing it completely, the famine will become a serial killer who has no mercy on his victims, only killing them sadistically.
Moral pressure
The world does not want to be involved in such a scene in light of the moral pressure that is increasing due to the global social movement on political leaders who are deprived of public meetings without any disturbances emerging from among the crowd of cheerleaders.
In this case, the actors give their cover to the Rafah war with a better degree of humanity.
The humanity of the serial killer, who might kill his victim and sit down to cry over it before moving on to the next victim.
In this aspect as well, it is possible to speculate about the expected displacement operations from Rafah, which will head towards the west of southern Gaza, where the port area is.
There, it is easy to deal directly with the displaced by the humanitarian organizations receiving port aid, while the port plays as a human attraction point to stimulate the displacement process.
On the other hand, there is an assumption that the Rafah crossing, despite its tight closure and the high fulfillment of the obligations of those in charge of the gate, has ended its usefulness for the current stage at least, in which the Israelis are requesting complete control over the Strip.
The seaport, which was established with full Israeli approval and coordination, but with international (mostly Arab) funding, gives the killers the opportunity to achieve permanent security control over Gaza.
In this way, the port is part of attempts to answer the so far missing questions of the day after the war.
In this sense, he says to those in charge of the gate: There is no need for your services today.
Egyptian sources have expressed their discomfort with the idea of the port, despite the guarantees that were previously mentioned to reduce Cairo’s fears.
The end of the feasibility of the Rafah crossing may be related to the displacement project itself, which is still serious even after the end of the war, and the desire to push human masses towards the adjacent Egyptian area in Rafah, Egypt, and thus push the crossing several kilometers deeper into Sinai.
This precludes the Philadelphia Axis arrangements provided for in the Camp David Accords.
But the recent scene teaches us that nothing is sacred on our Arab side, everything is negotiable and amendable except us.
An exceptional role
On the third aspect, there is something related to Hamas, whose tools are still effective in most parts of the Gaza Strip to some degree, despite the terrible blows it has been subjected to over the course of more than 160 days of great bombing.
Hamas will be more cohesive in Rafah, whose four brigades and administrative bodies are being talked about there.
The entry of any aid through the Rafah crossing will necessarily place it under the supervision of Hamas in Rafah, and thus the possibility of supplying supplies to its members and agencies.
In this way, the port is an attempt to avoid the tight knot of movement in the right corner of the sector.
This aspect cannot be ignored in particular, as every aid fund or bag of flour that entered the Gaza Strip was subject to strict standards, all or most of which were subject to consideration of Hamas’s position in this fund or that bag.
In the end, and to avoid the exaggerations that have become the nature of the brutal behavior of the occupier and its international cover, the Rafah crossing has not completely lost its role yet.
He will remain an exceptional player in the lives of the people of Gaza, a part of their eternal awareness of those living on both sides of it, and a bell in our human memory.
Within the developments related to the seaport, the people of Gaza are on a date with a new social structure that enters their lives and shapes, to a certain degree, their perceptions of themselves through a sea dock and ships that dock and depart, in the context of preserving the tragedy to the degree of punishment rather than death.
The Rafah crossing was also, and still is, part of the consciousness of the Gazan who traveled and witnessed what it means to cross from there.
It will remain to be mentioned that the difference between the Rafah land port and the Gaza sea port is that the former is theoretically two-way, while the latter is one-way.
Given that the Rafah crossing is designated for individuals, the idea of allocating a port for goods across the sea may relieve the occupation from the pressure of its hate-filled base, which besieges the goods crossings.
To prevent the entry of aid to the people of Gaza, the port appears to be an international effort, while Netanyahu appeases his herds of monsters.
Despite all of the above, the value of this Gaza sea port is determined by the amount of decent national living it will provide for the remaining people of the Strip, not by analyzes that may be right or wrong, and are incapable, until now, of building good intentions.
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of Al Jazeera.