Rafah crossing opens for a day
2006-07-18 11:36
Ashraf Sweillam
Rafah - Egypt and Israel reopened the Rafah border crossing on Tuesday for the first time in three weeks, triggering a rush to the border by thousands of Palestinians who had been waiting in Egypt.
About 300 Palestinians entered the Gaza Strip in the first hour of the crossing's opening. Another 5 000 Palestinians were waiting on the Egyptian side to go back to Gaza.
Palestinian official Hany Jabour said the crossing would be open for only one day. He said Israel had imposed the time limit on the opening.
In Jerusalem, the Israeli defence ministry said a decision would be taken on Tuesday evening on whether to keep the border open indefinitely.
'I will never come to Egypt again'
A military spokesperson said that the European monitors at Rafah crossing would assess whether the border could remain open.
Aboul Khair, 50, a barber from Khan Younis in the Strip, who had been waiting for three weeks to return with his wife, said: "I will never, never, never come to Egypt again because of the pain and suffering I have endured with my wife."
A Palestinian student, Heba al-Qaysi, 21, said she had run out of money and had been reduced to sleeping under the stars because of the prolonged closure.
She said: "I came to Egypt to renew my visa for Saudi Arabia. I won't ever come back to Egypt after the humiliation we suffered."
News of the opening spread fast on the Egyptian side and the road between Rafah and El-Arish, the biggest town in northern Sinai, was quickly filled with cars and minibuses carrying Palestinians toward the border.
Palestinian militants raided Israeli military
Jabour said that on the Gaza side, there were lots of empty buses waiting to take the Palestinians to various places in the Strip.
The crossing was closed on June 25 after Palestinian militants raided an Israeli military outpost next to the Strip's border and kidnapped an Israeli soldier.
But, by then there was already a backlog of Palestinians waiting to cross from Egypt as the border had been open only intermittently for the previous week because the Israelis had warned the European monitors at the crossing of a high security risk.
Last Friday, the pressure to cross became so intense that Palestinian militants on the Gaza side forced open a gate at Rafah crossing, enabling about 600 Palestinians to return from Egypt before security officials managed to reseal the border.
Rafah crossing was the Strip's only gate to the outside world that didn't pass through Israel. Thousands of Palestinians lived in northern Sinai and had relatives in the Gaza Strip.
- AP