On Gaza, LA Times Corrects, Contorts
After seven weeks, the Los Angeles Times today extracted itself out of its Gaza electricity dilemma by printing a correction.
Unfortunately, though, the paper twisted itself Sunday into another new-old pretzel, with Ashraf Khalil reporting:
Israel sealed Gaza’s borders after the Hamas takeover, and one of the scenarios floated in the Yemeni talks would reopen the borders under the control of Fatah and the Palestinian Authority.
The problems in this contortion are two-fold:
1) “Seal” means:
a. to close hermetically: to seal off a jar.
b. to block (an entrance, area, etc.) completely so as to prevent escape or entrance: The police sealed off the area after the bomb threat was received.
But Israel has not hermetically closed the Gaza Strip. Here is a list, for example, of the truckloads of supplies brought from Israel to the Gaza Strip in the last few days. In addition, in 2007, more than 7000 Gazans entered Israel and the West Bank for medical treatment.
2) Even had Israel wanted to, it could not “seal Gaza’s borders,” because the strip shares a border with Egypt, where, as the recent mass breach attests, Israel has no control.
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