CAIRO: A council of leading Muslim clerics has supported the Egyptian government’s construction of an underground barrier along the border with Gaza to impede tunneling by smugglers, a report said on Friday.
The Islamic Research Council of Al-Azhar University said that the tunnels were used to smuggle drugs and threatened Egypt’s security, the Al-Masri Al-Yawm newspaper reported.
“It is one of Egypt’s legitimate rights to place a barrier that prevents the harm from the tunnels under Rafah, which are used to smuggle drugs and other (contraband) that threaten Egypt’s stability,” the paper quoted the clerics as saying.
“Those who oppose building this wall are violating the commands of Islamic law,” they added, after a meeting attended by Egypt’s top cleric Sheikh Mohammed Said Tantawi, who is a government appointee.
Construction of the underground barrier has drawn angry condemnation from the Hamas rulers of the Gaza Strip, which relies on the tunnels for food and fuel, as well as the weapons and other contraband the barrier is designed to stop.
Israel has sealed the territory off to all but very limited supplies of basic goods ever since the Islamist group seized control in 2007, ousting forces loyal to Western-backed Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas.
Hamdi Hassan, an Islamist member of the Egyptian Parliament, has filed a lawsuit against President Hosni Mubarak demanding a halt to construction of the barrier, the newspaper reported.
Hundreds of demonstrators rallied on opposite sides of the Israeli-Gaza border crossing on Thursday to protest the blockade of the seaside territory imposed by Egypt and Israel.
In Gaza, about 100 international activists gathered with some 500 Gazans, chanting and carrying signs denouncing the blockade.
A small number of anti-Zionist, Orthodox Jews were among them — a rare sight in Gaza. Rabbi Dovid Feldman, from New York, said he came to Gaza for the march with three others from the small Neturei Karta sect, which denounces Israel’s existence.
Feldman said Israel’s offensive in Gaza last winter was “against Palestine, against Judaism, against the Jewish people and against humanity.”
