ISMAILIA, Egypt — Egyptian police rounded up about 2,000 Palestinians in Sinai a day after clashes between masked Palestinian gunmen and Egyptian forces killed one person and wounded 59, a security official said yesterday.
The clashes on Monday renewed tension at the border between Egypt and the Gaza Strip, which was blasted open by Hamas Islamist militants on Jan. 23 in defiance of an Israeli-led blockade. Egypt sealed the breached border on Sunday in coordination with the Islamist movement.
The security official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Egyptian police locked up around 1,500 Palestinians inside a youth camp in the town of El-Arish. He said all of them had permits to reside abroad but wanted entry visas to Egypt. They will not be allowed to leave the camp until their paperwork is finalized, the official added.
Police had detained around 500 other Palestinians in the border town of Rafah after the fighting, the official said. They would all be deported to the Gaza Strip. The Palestinians had broken windows and burned furniture and papers in the offices in which they were being held, he added.
North Sinai Gov. Ahmed Abdel-Hamid told a news conference: “It is time to take decisive measures to prevent anyone coming near the border between Egypt and Gaza.” At least 45 Egyptian policemen and 14 Palestinians were wounded in the clashes at the Rafah border crossing. Hamas, which has run the Gaza Strip since crushing out the forces of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in June, denied any role in the fighting.
The violence erupted after Egyptian security men stopped the flow of people trying to go back home and the crowd responded with stone-throwing, prompting the Egyptians to use smoke grenades, local residents said.
The Egyptian government faces a difficult balancing act. It does not want to be seen as aiding the Israeli blockade, but is under US and Israeli pressure to take control. It also fears the spread of Islamist influence and the effects of becoming home to so many undocumented Palestinians.
Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak said in an interview published in Spain yesterday Egypt would not allow its border with Gaza to be breached again by militants seeking to escape an Israeli blockade. “It is a mistake to besiege the Palestinians but we will not accept that the border (with Gaza) be left open indefinitely. What happened will not be repeated,” he told conservative daily newspaper ABC.
Mubarak rejected any responsibility for the violence between Egyptian police and the Palestinians at the border in the interview, timed to coincide with the start of a two-day a visit by Spanish King Juan Carlos to Egypt. “We did not give any order to shoot anyone,” he said.
Hamas said yesterday it regretted the use of force by Egyptian security forces. “Regrettable incidents at the Egyptian-Palestinian border occurred after Egyptian security forces prevented Palestinians stuck on the Egyptian side from returning home to Gaza,” Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said in a statement in Gaza. “Hamas regrets these incidents and the treatment that Egyptian security has meted out to Palestinian citizens.”
