I'm back from a long break from blogging. I wanted to congratulate everyone on the new year but that would inappropriate when Israel, in only five days, murdered four hundred Palestinians, and injured close to two thousand, in Gaza while the world watches.

The tragedy is that nobody will stop Israel, and Arabs in particular. How could they when their governments are part of the plot, and specially Egypt which had approved of bombing Gaza in the hope of getting rid of Hamas.

The suffering of the people of Gaza didn't start five days ago. For more than a year, they had to endure a merceless seige both from Israel and from Egypt. Basic food and drugs were not allowed in, let alone the loss of jobs and the complete destruction of the local economy. As the Arabic saying goes "the aggression from your brother is more painful than that of the enemy", and for Gazans, it's the Egyptian government that had refused to open the Rafah crossing to let in food and medicine, and it hurts more.

The people in the Arab world have expressed their anger at their governments, but they know better than to expect much from them or the Arab League. Some of the Arab governments, just as it was with the Lebanon war in 2006, are counting on Israel to take out Hamas. At the end, Arab leaders will have a summit and meet when it's all over, and conguratulate themselves that they still have their seats.

And After Israel feels it has killed enough Palestinians and pulls out, the people of Gaza will still be under seige and as the Egyptian president confirmed Rafah crossing will not be opened.

The situation in Gaza

Palestinian women broke through the Egyptian-Palestinian border yesterday, and overnight the border crossing was blown up. The situation in Gaza is dire, and the suffering is so great that the people aren't really afraid of gunfire or the Egyptian security, they just want to eat and feed their children. Many of those who've crossed to the Egyptian Rafah came back after they bought the food supplies they needed. Aljazeera was one of the first channels to cover it, perhaps the first, and certainly had the best coverage and footage. Luckily, these reports are available online, on Aljazeera's Youtube channel.