Two weeks after the Islamists of Hamas toppled the border fence, letting hundreds of thousands1
of inhabitants of the Gaza Strip spill briefly into Egypt, the situation appears to have returned to what
counts as normal. But normal is not good.
Gaza’s 1.5 million people remain besieged, generally unable to leave, and with imports4
restricted to minimal amounts of staple food and fuel. The Hamas militants who have run Gaza since
ousting their secular-minded Fatah rivals last summer have continued to fire rockets and mortars into
Israeli towns and farms. 7
As a possible harbinger of more violence to come, Hamas has also taken again to sending
suicide bombers into Israel. In the first such Hamas operation since blowing up two buses in Beersheba
in 2004, a pair of suicide bombers, reportedly former inmates of Israeli prisons from Hebron in the West10
Bank, killed a 73-year-old woman in the southern Israeli town of Dimona on February 4th 2008. Israel
responded the same day with new missile attacks, killing nine armed Hamas men.
Now, a fortnight since Hamas forces engineered the Gaza break-out, the Egyptian authorities13
have resealed and reinforced the border, some 12 km (7.5 miles) long, with thick coils of razor wire and
hundreds of extra troops; they say they will resist another attempt to knock a hole in it.
Their will was tested this week, when Egyptian security forces clashed with stone-throwing16
Palestinians.
Internet: <www.economist.com> (adapted).