I’m starting to come around to Noah Pollak’s thinking on Gaza. Today Egypt’s president announced that he will keep the crossings from Gaza into his country open–meaning that in his own humanitarian moment, he put himself into a position in which the only way for Gaza to remain beseiged is if he does the beseiging.

The biggest problem with Gaza, from Israel’s perspective, is that Israel has withdrawn and yet the world still sees Gaza as occupied. An intolerable situation was created in which Israel sacrificed all the military and civilian advantages of being there but continued paying the price: Gaza remained dependent on the Jewish state for fuel and food. The only way to “end the occupation” was to cut itself off completely, which the world called a “seige” so long as Gazans had no way in or out.

The Israeli commentator Alex Fishman put it this way in a column today on Ynet:

Besides the Egyptian government, which shot itself in the foot, everyone is pleased: Businesses in Rafah are flourishing and in Gaza the price of a cigarette pack dropped by 80%. Israel has been presented with a golden opportunity for diplomatic gains: Yesterday, in fact, was the beginning of the real disengagement from Gaza . . . Yesterday Hamas caused an absolute and complete disconnection between the Gaza economy and the West Bank economy, ahead of the emergence of two separate Palestinian entities. The moment huge quantities of goods entered the Strip without coordinating it with Israel, all duty agreements were in fact breached. From now on, Gazans would not be able to export even a matchbox to Israel or to the West Bank.

Defense officials reached the conclusion that it’s all about physics, and that Gaza is like a toothpaste tube. You squeeze it powerfully and the paste comes out of the weakest side— Egypt.

With the floodgates open, there is no siege. The occupation is over. Gaza is now Egypt’s problem.