When Israel was gearing up to withdraw from Gaza and give the Palestinians land for their own state, one of the key questions was what to do the Gaza-Egypt border - the Philadelphi corridor and the Rafah crossing. Even under Oslo Israel had always insisted on militarily controlling the border. But the State Department wanted to leverage the disengagement to maximize Palestinian sovereignty and so US diplomats put unprecedented pressure on Sharon to abandon the border. To mitigate Israeli security concerns the EU promised to send monitors to prevent smuggling through the Rafah crossing.

Because this is how security assurances to Israel always work, the EU naturally backed out of the monitoring agreement. Israel had two choices: militarily reoccupy parts of Gaza - which it was obviously unwilling to do - or shut down the crossing and incur years of "the apartheid Zionists are blockading the poor Palestinians" propaganda. Typical anti-Israel bait and switch - establish irreversible facts on the ground and then bail out. This situation - the initial Israeli border withdrawal plus the EU's failure to live up to their monitoring commitments - is what allowed Hamas to smuggle in so many high-tech weapons so quickly.

Which makes this stunt particularly shameless:

Europe also proposed a concrete measure to calm nerves: the revival of an EU observer mission to the Rafah border crossing between Gaza and Egypt. Egypt temporarily opened the checkpoint to allow wounded Palestinians out of Gaza, but Europe would like to oversee a more permanent arrangement to allow in aid and end the Hamas-controlled territory's isolation.

In fairness to them - they've been undermining Israeli security with different bait and switches for five decades. Why go through the hassle of coming up with new ones when the same old ones will probably still work? Next up: the UN promises to put observers in the Sinai to ensure Israeli security.

References and previously after the jump...