EREZ CROSSING, Gaza Strip, 27 August 2007 — Israel allowed 75 Palestinians out of Gaza yesterday to resume lives abroad cut short by Hamas’ seizure of the coastal strip two months ago. More than 4,000 Palestinians with overseas work and study permits have been living in fear of losing badly needed jobs and academic credits after Israel and Egypt clamped a closure on Gaza following the Islamist group’s takeover.
Several hundred foreign nationals and Palestinians with dual citizenship, as well as a few Palestinians working and studying abroad, had already been permitted to cross through Israeli territory en route to other points. But Sunday’s departure from Gaza was the first by a large group of Palestinians with foreign permits.
They passed through the Erez crossing into Israel after lengthy Israeli security checks, then were bused to a southern Israel border crossing with Egypt 140 kilometers away.
“It was an experiment today to see how it goes,” said Shlomo Dror, an Israeli military spokesman who reported that 75 Palestinians crossed.
“If it went smoothly it will be a temporary solution to allow humanitarian cases out, until a permanent solution is found.” The firing of mortar shells at Erez by Palestinian militants on Saturday “makes things more difficult,” he said.
Khamis Nemr, 38, who works in the United Arab Emirates, was among those approved to leave. Nemr said he had been visiting his family in Gaza when Hamas took over, and needed to get back to the UAE by Aug. 31, when his residency permit expires. “I can’t believe that I will be able to get back,” Nemr said. “I thought I had lost my future because my residency permit will end.”
Hussein Al-Sheikh, director of the Palestinian government’s civil affairs office, said thousands of trapped Palestinians were expected to leave Gaza this week.
Ahmad Khalil, a 22-year-old Gazan who studies electrical engineering in Cairo, was not permitted to leave Gaza yesterday. Khalil missed his final exams in July because of the closure, so the university agreed to delay his exam until Sept. 2, he said. But now he’s afraid he’ll miss that deadline, jeopardizing his entire academic year. “I am counting the days to get out of Gaza, and I told my family that I will never come back,” Khalil said. “I am feeling that I am an animal trapped in a big jail.”
Meanwhile, a one-year-old Palestinian ill baby died yesterday after crossing into Israel from the Gaza Strip to receive treatment for a heart condition, Palestinian medics and the Israeli Army said.
Ibrahim Abu Nahel died after waiting for hours to enter Israel at Erez, Muawiya Abu Hassanin, the director of the Palestinian ambulance service, told AFP.
The Israeli authorities denied that the boy and his father had been delayed at the border crossing, saying they had passed within minutes. “He arrived at 8 a.m. (and) he was delayed at least three hours at Erez,” Hassanin said, referring to Nahel’s father with whom he spoke by telephone.
“Once he passed, the Israelis did not arrange for an ambulance, so he took a taxi to the hospital and he died in the taxi near Ashkelon,” a southern Israeli town, Hassanin said.
In another development, dozens of Palestinian journalists and representatives of foreign and local news outlets on Saturday held a demonstration in the central West Bank city of Ramallah to protest Hamas’ security apparatus “Executive Force” crackdown on media last Friday in the Gaza Strip.
The organizers of the demonstration issued a statement declaring “we want to show our solidarity with the journalists in Gaza, for the assaults and oppression they suffer from the Hamas-affiliated Executive Force.”
Dozens of journalists staged a sit-in in Gaza yesterday. More than a 100 reporters gathered in front of the journalists union building in central Gaza City, two days after Hamas forces briefly detained four journalists and violently broke up a rally of the rival Fatah party.
