RAFAH, Gaza — A leading member of the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas entered Egypt from Gaza yesterday to resume talks with the Egyptian government on arrangements at the border, a security source said. Mahmoud Al-Zahar, a Gazan who was Palestinian foreign minister in a short-lived government led by Hamas, crossed with about four other Hamas officials and headed for the coastal town of El Arish, the capital of the Egyptian border province.
Last month, Hamas members blew holes in the border between Gaza and Egypt and knocked down the metal fence so that Palestinians could seek relief from an Israeli blockade. Over a period of almost two weeks hundreds of thousands of Palestinians visited Egyptian towns in north Sinai, stocking up on goods which had become scarce in Gaza.
But Egyptian police have since resealed the border and Cairo has not given any public commitment to ease the restrictions on the movement of goods and people, as Hamas has requested.
A senior Egyptian security source said Zahar would hold talks at a hotel in El Arish with Egyptian security chief Omar Suleiman, Cairo’s point man on dealings with the Palestinians. They will talk about securing the border and reopening the Rafah crossing under the supervision of the Palestinian Authority of President Mahmoud Abbas, another official said.
The Egyptian government says it would like the Palestinian Authority to take charge at the crossing point, but Abbas and his Fatah group have little influence in Gaza, where Hamas took control in June after a conflict with Fatah.
The five-member group entered via the Rafah crossing. A Hamas source in the Gaza Strip confirmed the delegation’s trip saying it was for “talks on the border situation and supply of basic needs to Gaza.” Zahar already traveled to Cairo once after the Gaza border was breached and arranged a deal with Egypt on restoring control over the frontier, Gaza’s only one not with Israel.
Since then there has been disagreement over how the border should be handled. Abbas insists that Hamas hand back control of Gaza after they ejected his Fatah forces in June. Abbas says a 2005 deal he reached with Israel when he still controlled Gaza still stands. Under that agreement, the Rafah crossing was to be overseen by European Union monitors with cameras enabling round-the-clock surveillance by Israel of those passing through — something Hamas rejects.
Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak’s spokesman said earlier this month that the attitude of the partners to the 2005 deal would be critical in finding a way forward. Egypt last week hardened its position, with Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit saying that “anyone who breaches the border will have their legs broken.”
Meanwhile, Israeli Army arrested at dawn yesterday 30 Palestinians in Rafah. Witnesses and local sources said that an Israeli undercover unit infiltrated into Al-Showka village near the Gaza international airport late Wednesday, and launched an arrest drive against residents.
A spokesman of the Israeli Army announced that an undercover unit arrested 30 citizens of the village, pointing out that the arrested men were transferred to the concerned parties in Israel for interrogation.
Earlier on Wednesday, a number of the Israeli Army tanks rolled into the destroyed Gaza airport where they clashed with the Palestinian resistance fighters, and pulled out to the near Al-Showka village, witnesses said.
Also in the Gaza Strip, the Israeli troops yesterday bombed a number of abandoned houses in the Palestinian side of the Eretz checkpoint, witnesses said that the Israeli troops opened their gunfire intensively in the area during their operation in order to achieve their mission safely.
—With input from agencies
