RAFAH, Gaza Strip, 25 January 2008 — Egyptian border guards steered huge crowds of Palestinians as they streamed from Gaza to Egypt across a breached border for a second day yesterday, but did not try to halt the flow.
Still, Egyptian officials said the border would eventually “return to normal,” and Egyptian police prevented Gazans from moving deeper into Egypt.
Some Palestinian travelers in the Egyptian town of El Arish, about 30 km from the border, said they were told by local police they should start making their way back if they had no urgent business in the city, signaling that the resealing of the border was getting under way.
Gazans had hoped that the temporary border opening — Palestinian militants had blasted down the border wall on Wednesday — will become permanent. Both Egypt and Israel had restricted the movement of people and goods in and out of Gaza after Hamas won Parliament elections in 2006, and further tightened the closure after Hamas seized control of the area by force.
“The Egyptians started doing good deeds by letting us in. For God’s sake, why don’t they keep allowing us to pass through?” said Mohammed Abu Amra, a Palestinian walking across the border on crutches. “Everyone is rushing into Egypt before they seal it off.”
Gaza businessman Abu Omar Shurafa received a shipment of 100 tons of cement, seizing an opportunity to stock up before the border closes again. “Everyone is exerting all efforts to stock the reserves for six to seven months. We have to find a way to continue living,” he said.
Still, he was also hopeful that this could be the beginning of a new arrangement. “A solution has to be like this,” he said, referring to the flow of goods from Egypt.
Israel’s Position
Meanwhile, Israeli Deputy Defense Minister Matan Vilnai said Israel gradually wants to relinquish responsibility for Gaza, now that the territory’s border with Egypt has been blown open. “We need to understand that when Gaza is open to the other side we lose responsibility for it. So we want to disconnect from it,” Vilnai told Israeli Army radio yesterday.
It was not immediately clear he was expressing official thinking or his personal view. Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Arye Mekel struck a similar tone, saying that once Gazans are getting supplies from elsewhere, there is less need for Israel to provide for them. Privately, Israeli officials said the border breach could pave the way for increasingly disconnecting from the territory.
Egypt Rejects Israeli Ideas
Egypt angrily rejected the Israeli ideas, and said it would not change border arrangements. “The border will go back as normal,” said Egyptian Foreign Ministry spokesman Hossam Zaki, adding that Egypt had not been approached by Israel about a possible change in the status of Gaza.
“The current situation is only an exception and for temporary reasons,” he said.
On the Gaza-Egypt border, Egyptian border guards were patrolling access roads to the border yesterday. Police in helmets and with sniffer dogs used batons to beat the hoods of private cars and pickup trucks that massed at the border to carry Palestinians further into Egyptian territory.
Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak has been under intense public pressure at home in recent days to alleviate the suffering of Gazans under blockade.
However, Egypt would most likely be reluctant to have an open border with a territory ruled by militants.
Before dawn on Wednesday, gunmen had blasted the border wall, and tens of thousands of Gazans, cooped up by border closures, had rushed into Egypt.
The breach effectively ended Israel’s tight blockade of Gaza, imposed last week in response to a spike in rocket attacks on Israeli border towns.
In the past two days, Gazans stocked up on supplies in Egypt, including cement, fuel, cigarettes and other staples. In response, Israel stopped emergency shipments of industrial diesel fuel, arguing that Gazans are now able to get supplies from Egypt. However, Palestinian officials said Gaza’s power plant would shut down Sunday, for a second time in a week, if the fuel shipments don’t resume.
Hamas Popularity on Upswing
The border breach has boosted the popularity of Gaza’s Hamas rulers, who in recent months had struggled to rule because of border closures.
The sanctions have led to severe shortages of cement, cigarettes and other basic goods, deepened poverty and drove up unemployment.
Hamas has used the breach — carefully planned, with militants weakening the metal wall with blowtorches about a month ago — to push its demand for reopening the border passages, this time with Hamas involvement. Such an arrangement would in effect end the international sanctions against the militants.
Hamas government spokesman Taher Nunu suggested yesterday that Hamas would seek a future role on the Gaza-Egypt border. “An open border like this has no logic,” he said. “We are studying the mechanism of having an official crossing point.” However, it’s not clear whether Egypt will acquiesce.
Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh yesterday said that he is willing to negotiate a deal to run the Rafah border crossing with the Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and the Egyptian government.
However, Nimer Hamad, an aide of President Abbas, said that Hamas must first admit to its inability to run the Gaza Strip before asking Abbas to send his forces to the Rafah crossing.
