Guns and bombs are never scarce in a battlefield, but food can be dangerously so. The surprising thing about the assault on the border wall between Gaza and Egypt is that it had not happened before. For the Palestinians living in Gaza, the wall stood between life and death, since an economic blockade had cut off their supplies of food, fuel, medicine and all other necessities. It is unrealistic to expect that moral and other issues would deter a people from doing anything in order to procure food. Tel Aviv may now be ruing its failure to lift or relax the blockade. If nothing else, the breaching of the wall has exposed Israel’s weakness in a way that few events since the last Lebanon war did. The Western powers looked the other way when the blockade began. But Tel Aviv lost much of its justification for imposing it when it cut off fuel supplies from Egypt to Gaza’s only power plant. On the other hand, the event will boost the morale of the Hamas which had been low since the beginning of the blockade. It is no victory in a battle; but “the public relations victory”, as some have called it, can give the Hamas an edge in its battles against the Fatah, its main domestic rival.

But, as the cliché goes, innovative minds can turn every adversity into an opportunity. For Tel Aviv, the breaching of the wall can offer new strategic possibilities. After they have got over the first shock, Israel’s strategists may find that the impact of the event need not really be exaggerated. After all, the Palestinian authorities may be forced by the ground realities to rebuild those parts of the wall that were breached. What is more important for Israel is the possible Egyptian response. For years, Tel Aviv has pleaded with Cairo to strengthen its security on the Gaza border. The assault on the wall will now give an urgency to this appeal that Cairo may find difficult to ignore. The wall had been a joint project by Israel and Egypt, and the two countries can now improve on the common cause by its reconstruction and the strengthening of its security. A larger opportunity for the peace process in West Asia can arise if the Western powers react adequately to the event. It may be a coincidence that the episode of the wall took place so soon after a renewed peace initiative by the United States of America. The writing on the wall at Gaza is only partially about the blockade. The larger message is about the need for a revival of the peace process.