breach in the Gaza Barrier, personal analysis

Early this morning, Hamas militants destroyed a section of the Israeli wall between Gaza and Egypt, allowing hundreds of Gazans to enter Egypt to buy supplies in the towns across the border.  By later in the morning, 2/3 of the wall had been destroyed, with tens of thousands of Gazans streaming across the border.  Reports differed as to whether the Egyptian border security forces actually tried to stop the Gazan influx or not; an article on the International Herald Tribune said that earlier in the day they did, but as more and more Gazans were attempting to cross the border, they became overwhelmed and simply stood back to watch.  I was thinking about this, and how Egypt and Israel are going to deal with this, and had this conversation with a friend:

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but you heard about them blowing up most of the Wall at Rafah and tens of thousands of Palestinians streaming across the border into Egypt to buy food and supplies, yeah?

Hamas blew up the fence that Israel had built around Gaza, between Gaza and Egypt, so the Gazans (who have been under Israeli military siege since June) could get out and buy the supplies that have been all but blocked from entering Gaza

they started working on it really early this morning, and Egyptian border forces tried to keep people from coming through the break in the wall, but later in the morning there were tens of thousands of people trying to get through, so both Hamas security on the Gaza side and Egyptian security on the Egypt side just stood around and watched

but seriously, Gaza is a humanitarian nightmare
something was bound to happen sooner or later from Gaza
you can't keep people locked up without food, water and electricity forever

which is what was happening in Gaza, with the Israeli closures
 I'm just astounded that no one really stopped them
 like, it's not as if Israel has any qualms about bombing stuff

if they really wanted Gazans to quit going to Egypt, they would have just gone in and bombed the heck out of Rafah
 I think that this is Israel's way of saving face

they said that they didn't have troops stationed at the crossing between Gaza and Egypt, that it's Egypt's responsibility to control that bit, and that they'd expect Egypt to do something about it

I don't know what kind of internal pressures the Israeli government was under, but one side was probably like, "no, keep the Gazans inside until they die" and the other side was like "no, this is inhumane", so the easy solution was to "let them escape" into Egypt, and relinquish all responsibility
 a really similar thing happened in a West Wing episode, actually!

so it'll be interesting to see how Egypt plays this
 if they welcome the Palestinians (who are buying all sorts of supplies in the border towns), then the international community will have a positive impression of Egypt
 but this'll piss off the Israelis
 as well as making Egyptian border security look inept

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I've been glancing at news stories on this during the day, and so far I haven't read any substantial response from Israel.  Predictably (and not altogether unjustifiably), they're concerned about what else might come back into Gaza besides much-needed supplies, but apart from that I haven't seen much comment on this incident from the Israelis in the international media.  Weird, isn't it?