RAFAH, Egypt, 30 January 2008 — Egypt boosted security around the border town of Rafah yesterday and resealed parts of the barrier blasted open a week ago as it tried to control the flow of people in and out of the Gaza Strip.

Egyptian forces strung barbed wire along some of the gaps between two gates leading into the Palestinian territory, while riot police were deployed on roads from Rafah to the border crossings.

A security force of around 20,000 has been deployed in north of the Sinai Peninsula since Saturday, a security source told AFP. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have swarmed into Egypt since militants blew holes in the border wall on Jan. 22 after a devastating Israeli blockade of the Hamas-run territory cut vital fuel and aid supplies.

Amid the piecemeal moves to control the border, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and a delegation from the rival Islamist movement Hamas were to travel to Cairo today for crisis talks with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. Mahmoud Zahar, the most influential chief in Gaza, who has had two sons killed in Israeli airstrikes, most recently on Jan. 15, will head the Hamas delegation.

A Hamas official said the team was prepared to meet Abbas, who has previously ruled out dialogue with the Islamists unless they relinquish their control of the Gaza Strip. Israel welcomed the possibility of an Abbas-Mubarak deal on retaking control of the border between Egypt and Gaza, which has been under Hamas rule since its fighters routed forces loyal to the Palestinian president in June.

“If Abu Mazen (Abbas) and Mubarak reach some kind of understanding on sharing control over the Rafah crossing, Israel will certainly not oppose such an arrangement,” a senior Israeli official told AFP. On Monday, US President George W. Bush, whose administration considers Hamas a terrorist group, had a blunt message for Palestinians suffering from the prolonged Israeli blockade.

“Look what Hamas has brought you,” he told ABC News Radio in his first public remarks on the crisis since Israel’s punitive lockdown of the territory. “They’re delivering you misery.” The White House has described Israel’s blockade of Gaza — where most of its 1.5 million population relies on outside aid — as an act of justifiable self-defense in the face of rocket attacks from the territory into Israel.

In Rafah, shops were running out of stocks after Egypt started blocking new supplies being trucked in from Cairo on Sunday. “We are mostly missing vaccinations for the children which ran out on the first day,” said one pharmacist in Rafah. “We have ordered a shipment but authorities have blocked it at the Peace Bridge,” which leads into the Sinai.

Hamas member of Parliament Salah Al-Bardawil said the Islamist group wanted new arrangements at the Gaza-Egypt border to replace a 2005 agreement Abbas reached with Israel under which the Rafah crossing was supervised by European Union monitors and cameras allowing Israel to see those passing through.