AMONG THE MANY BAD DEFENSES OF THE BLOCKADE...:

Egypt Opens Gaza Border as Activists Counter Israeli Claims (JOSHUA MITNICK, 6/01/10, WSJ))

Meanwhile, Egypt said it would open up its typically closed land border with Gaza for humanitarian purposes. The crossing remained closed to the general public.

Egypt opens the border from time to time. Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak has faced growing domestic opposition to his policy of keeping the border shut. Both Israel and Egypt enacted a de facto blockade of the territory after the Palestinian militant group Hamas took over in 2007.

Egypt's move could add to growing international pressure on Israel to modify its own blockade. Human-rights activists say European governments—despite their general, public opposition to the blockade— haven't put adequate pressure on Israel to lift the ban.

Critics say the blockade, among other things, strengthens Hamas by creating an underground economy based on smuggling tunnels to Egypt, which Hamas has started to tax. Israel's seemingly heavy-handed enforcement is also a public-relations coup for the group, critics say.

Dan Diker, a fellow at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, a think tank headed by a former policy aide to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, said the naval action could "delegitimize" its blockade of Gaza.

...certainly the worst is "Egypt does it too!"

Posted by Orrin Judd at June 1, 2010 2:18 PM