Egyptian Troops Seal Gaza Border
Ali Ali/European Pressphoto Agency
Egyptian troops sealed off the border with the Gaza Strip on Sunday morning.
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By ISABEL KERSHNER
Published: February 4, 2008
JERUSALEM — Egyptian troops closed the border with the Gaza Strip on Sunday morning, witnesses and Hamas officials said, apparently bringing an end to 11 days of free movement for Palestinian residents of the blockaded territory.
The Egyptian troops and police were allowing Gazans and Egyptians to cross the border to return to their homes, but prevented any new cross-border movement.
Egypt has made earlier attempts to close the border, but this time, after a visit to Cairo by senior Hamas officials, Hamas gunmen were cooperating with the Egyptians instead of seeking to thwart them.
On Saturday, Mahmoud Zahar, a senior Hamas official, said that the group, which runs Gaza, would cooperate with Egypt to close the border, breached before dawn a week ago Wednesday by Hamas land mines.
Mr. Zahar said his group’s gunmen would be removed from the Gaza side of the border and that efforts would be made to avoid any violence or confrontation with Egyptian border guards. Mr. Zahar spoke on his return to Gaza after taking part in talks with Egyptian officials in Cairo.
Hamas, the militant Islamic group that controls Gaza, blew up sections of a wall along the border with Egypt on Jan. 23, days after Israel sealed its border crossings with Gaza in response to intensified rocket fire against Israel. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have since crossed in and out of Egypt to stock up on supplies and other merchandise.
On Friday, Egypt tried to stop Palestinian vehicles from crossing the border but Hamas militants were seen removing the metal barricades and spikes laid down by the Egyptian police.
“Egypt’s message was very clear, that Sunday should be the day to put an end to this scene,” Mr. Zahar told the Arab television station Al Jazeera on Saturday. He added that border control would be restored “gradually.”
In initial statements made upon their return to Gaza, Hamas officials did not repeat a demand by the group for a central role in controlling the border crossing, but said the operation of the border should be an Egyptian-Palestinian matter and not subject to Israeli control.
Before the Hamas takeover of Gaza last June, the Rafah crossing between Gaza and Egypt was regulated by an agreement brokered by the United States after Israel withdrew from the area in 2005. Under its terms, forces loyal to the Palestinian Authority president, Mahmoud Abbas, controlled the Gaza side of the crossing in conjunction with European Union monitors, while Israel supervised the comings and goings from afar by video camera.
The crossing operated sporadically, with Israel deciding when it would be open or closed, citing security considerations. The crossing was formally closed in June when Hamas routed the forces loyal to Mr. Abbas and the European monitors left.
Mr. Abbas and Egypt favor returning to the 2005 agreement. Mr. Abbas was in Cairo for talks last week, and Javier Solana, the European Union foreign policy chief, was scheduled to arrive on Saturday for talks with President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt and other senior officials.
Fawzi Barhoum, a Hamas spokesman in Gaza, said Saturday that the European monitors would be welcome to return to Rafah, as long as their work was not subject to Israeli dictates.
Israeli officials said they would also be in favor of reviving the 2005 agreement. But it was not yet clear whether Israel would be demanding a supervisory role by video as in the past. “We don’t want to be the party that undermines an agreement,” said one Israeli official, speaking on condition of anonymity. “We want to be supportive of Egypt, of President Abbas and of the European Union,” he said.
The official added that whatever solution emerged must not jeopardize Israel’s security needs. He also said there was some skepticism in Jerusalem about whether the 2005 arrangement could still work. Even if Mr. Abbas placed his best people at the border, the official said, they would be vulnerable to pressure from Hamas.
An Israeli government spokesman, David Baker, said Saturday that “Hamas continues to destabilize the Gaza Strip and plunge it into mayhem, to the detriment of the Palestinian people.”
Israel has strictly controlled the flow of goods into Gaza since the Hamas takeover there, hoping to pressure Hamas into changing its positions, or to erode support for it among Gaza’s largely impoverished population of 1.5 million. The Hamas leader in Gaza, Ismail Haniya, was quoted Saturday in the pro-Hamas newspaper Palestine as saying that Gaza must forge stronger economic ties with Egypt as a way of disconnecting from Israel.
Several Israeli officials expressed a similar hope that Gaza would look more toward Egypt and become less dependent on Israel after the breach of the border in January.
Egyptian security forces arrested at least 14 Palestinian militants found with weapons and explosives on Friday and Saturday in the Sinai desert, not far from the breached Gaza border, according to news reports.
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On Saturday evening, Palestinian militants launched six rockets at Israel from Gaza, and one landed in the Israeli border town of Sderot, an Israeli Army spokeswoman said.
Taghreed El-Khodary contributed reporting from Gaza City.
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