DaJudge
January 24th, 2008, 10:40 AM
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Gazans Stream Into Egypt As Border Wall Is Breached
By Ellen Knickmeyer
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, January 24, 2008; A01
RAFAH, Gaza Strip, Jan. 23 -- Gunmen destroyed vast sections of the
seven-mile-long barricade that divides the Gaza Strip and Egypt (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/world/countries/egypt.html?nav=el) on
Wednesday, allowing tens of thousands of Palestinians to stream across the
border and revel in a day away from a territory where Israeli restrictions
have stifled the economy and caused blackouts and food shortages.
Jubilant Gazans flooded unhindered into Egypt, then hauled back purchases
ranging from cigarettes and diesel fuel to goats, cows and camels. Other
Palestinians walked for miles along Egyptian roads until their enthusiasm
subsided and they sank, exhausted, onto curbs to rest.
"We were not able to go out!" Amial Tarazi, a 28-year-old office worker in
Gaza City, said after clambering over broken stubs of the border wall in
heels and a dress. She stepped into Egypt alongside two co-workers who
had scaled the rubble in jackets and ties.
"We don't care about buying anything," Tarazi said. "We just wanted to see
Egypt. We just wanted to get out."
Since the armed Hamas movement took control of Gaza last June, Israel (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/world/countries/israel.html?nav=el) and
Egypt have all but sealed off the crossings that allow Gazans to travel and
trade. On Friday, Israel began imposing an even stricter blockade on the
territory of 1.5 million people to press Hamas to bring a halt to steady
Palestinian rocket and mortar fire from Gaza into southern Israel.
Wednesday's breach of the wall forced Israel and Egypt to weigh the
security implications of a suddenly porous boundary. Hamas members joined
the crowds crossing the border as Egyptian guards glowered but did not
interfere.
Gazans credited Hamas with opening the wall, although the movement did
not openly assert responsibility. Hamas officials told reporters that 17
explosions had destroyed parts of the barricade, in some instances taking
down sections hundreds of yards long.
The extent of Hamas's control over the territory and the border area made
it unlikely that another group could have carried out the breach.
In recent days Gazans have expressed increasing resentment toward Hamas
for provoking the blockade, which led to power blackouts, water cutoffs
and food shortages, but the opening of the wall boosted the movement's
image.
Sharuk Abou Jazur, 12, in pink clothing and pigtails, skipped back toward
Gaza with plastic bags crammed full of oranges from Egypt.
"The siege is over! It was Hamas's people who freed us," she said.
The breaking of the wall began about 2 a.m. Wednesday. Residents of the
border town of Rafah said they awoke to the sound of explosions.
The blasts snapped concrete barriers and sheared through rusted metal
fences. By daybreak, walls lay toppled, felled by men using heavy
machinery. Miles of the barricade lay in ruins.
In Gaza City, an hour from the border, Manal Abu Shamalla, 37, answered
her cellphone at 6:30 a.m.
"The way is open! Come!" her friends urged her, she said.
Her mother lives in Cairo, but because Abu Shamalla has not been able to
obtain from Israel the travel documents she needs to cross the border, she
has not seen her mother in 10 years, she said.
Abu Shamalla and her husband filled the tank of their car, using the last of
the generator fuel they had saved to power the house during blackouts.
She bundled her three children into winter coats and raced with thousands
of other Gazans to the border.
By midday, the family was making its way among the Palestinians streaming
sidewalk-to-sidewalk through the dirt streets of the Egyptian side of Rafah,
which is split by the border wall. With thousands more Gazans arriving each
hour, all with the hope of pushing deeper into Egypt, Abu Shamalla's family
could find no taxis to take them to her mother, and their spirits flagged.
"We only brought milk for the baby," she said, rocking her 3-month-old in
her arms on a street corner.
Gaza City's men piled onto flatbed trucks to rush to the border. City streets
quickly emptied of operable cars. Desperate men clustered at intersections.
"Where are you going?" they shouted at passersby, hoping for rides.
"Rafah?"
At the border, fathers handed toddlers over sections of the wall, so whole
families could have reunions in Egypt with relatives kept out of Gaza for
years by border restrictions. A housewife in a wool coat and carrying a
large purse struggled atop one section of the wall, unable to heft herself
over but peeling off the fingers of those who tried to pull themselves up and
climb past her.
Along one teeming road in the Egyptian part of Rafah, a Hamas security
official who had been stranded on Egypt's side of the border since June --
fearing arrest by Israel during a crossing if he tried to return -- met his
mother and sisters in the surging crowd. "Eight months I haven't seen him!"
his mother exclaimed after a flurry of hugging and kissing.
The man excused himself for not talking. "I'm on the wanted list," he
explained.
Israel accuses Egypt, increasingly sharply, of allowing smugglers to bring
arms and explosives into Gaza. It was clear Wednesday that contraband
and gunmen could cross the border that day with little chance of being
stopped.
Agreements between Egypt and Israel restrict the number of Egyptian
guards at the border to a few hundred. Seven or eight Egyptian border
guards stood lined up along one stretch of no man's land, which was thick
with milling Palestinians and livestock.
The Egyptian guards watched but did not move. "Don't speak to us! Don't
even look at us!" one Egyptian officer shouted after someone in the crowd
moved toward them.
Overwhelmed by the masses of Palestinians filling Egyptian Rafah's streets
and squares, many merchants shuttered their shops and retreated to their
windows and rooftops. In an orchard, an old man and his daughter swung
broken sticks at adults and children who were boldly walking away, arms
laden with oranges.
"When people are under pressure like they are in Gaza, of course they're
going to explode," said Abu Kamal, a resident of Egyptian Rafah who would
give only his nickname. From atop his concrete-block house, he and his
daughters watched the crowds below. Abu Kamal had opened his bicycle
repair shop Wednesday morning, only to close a few minutes later, after
pushing out the Palestinians who had crowded in.
"Where are these people going to sleep?" he mused, watching. "At the end
of the day, there's not going to be a thing left to eat in Rafah."
Egypt appeared to be stopping the Palestinians at El Arish, a city an hour
by car from the border.
But no vehicles could cross the border, and few people could reach that far
on foot. At points along the downed border walls, the streams of
Palestinians heading back to Gaza were thicker than the throngs of
Palestinians coming out.
In Cairo, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak told reporters that his border
guards originally had forced back the Gazans on Tuesday.
"But today a great number of them came back because the Palestinians in
Gaza are starving due to the Israeli siege," he said. "I told them to let them
come in and eat and buy food and then return them later as long as they
were not carrying weapons."
In Jerusalem, a Defense Ministry spokesman, Shlomo Dror, said that "the
focus is on Egypt" and that Israel was watching to see how Egypt handled
the crisis. Hamas's apparent execution of a well-orchestrated, large-scale
breach of the wall reflected badly on Egyptian border security, he said.
"From what I have seen, it's not going to be very easy to repair the wall,"
he said.
Hamas leader Khaled Meshal said from exile in Syria that the movement was
willing to work out a new border arrangement with Egypt and Fatah, the
Palestinian faction that controls the West Bank and the Palestinian
Authority. Ismail Haniyeh, the Hamas prime minister in Gaza, urged
immediate talks with Fatah and Egypt on the topic.
Ashraf Ajrami, a cabinet minister in the West Bank, rejected Hamas's
proposals Wednesday. "Everything Haniyeh is saying is simply to exploit this
situation to win political gains," Ajrami told reporters.
The Palestinian Authority accuses Hamas of endangering the Palestinian
goal of a unified state by administering Gaza on its own.
Gazans Stream Into Egypt As Border Wall Is Breached
By Ellen Knickmeyer
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, January 24, 2008; A01
RAFAH, Gaza Strip, Jan. 23 -- Gunmen destroyed vast sections of the
seven-mile-long barricade that divides the Gaza Strip and Egypt (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/world/countries/egypt.html?nav=el) on
Wednesday, allowing tens of thousands of Palestinians to stream across the
border and revel in a day away from a territory where Israeli restrictions
have stifled the economy and caused blackouts and food shortages.
Jubilant Gazans flooded unhindered into Egypt, then hauled back purchases
ranging from cigarettes and diesel fuel to goats, cows and camels. Other
Palestinians walked for miles along Egyptian roads until their enthusiasm
subsided and they sank, exhausted, onto curbs to rest.
"We were not able to go out!" Amial Tarazi, a 28-year-old office worker in
Gaza City, said after clambering over broken stubs of the border wall in
heels and a dress. She stepped into Egypt alongside two co-workers who
had scaled the rubble in jackets and ties.
"We don't care about buying anything," Tarazi said. "We just wanted to see
Egypt. We just wanted to get out."
Since the armed Hamas movement took control of Gaza last June, Israel (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/world/countries/israel.html?nav=el) and
Egypt have all but sealed off the crossings that allow Gazans to travel and
trade. On Friday, Israel began imposing an even stricter blockade on the
territory of 1.5 million people to press Hamas to bring a halt to steady
Palestinian rocket and mortar fire from Gaza into southern Israel.
Wednesday's breach of the wall forced Israel and Egypt to weigh the
security implications of a suddenly porous boundary. Hamas members joined
the crowds crossing the border as Egyptian guards glowered but did not
interfere.
Gazans credited Hamas with opening the wall, although the movement did
not openly assert responsibility. Hamas officials told reporters that 17
explosions had destroyed parts of the barricade, in some instances taking
down sections hundreds of yards long.
The extent of Hamas's control over the territory and the border area made
it unlikely that another group could have carried out the breach.
In recent days Gazans have expressed increasing resentment toward Hamas
for provoking the blockade, which led to power blackouts, water cutoffs
and food shortages, but the opening of the wall boosted the movement's
image.
Sharuk Abou Jazur, 12, in pink clothing and pigtails, skipped back toward
Gaza with plastic bags crammed full of oranges from Egypt.
"The siege is over! It was Hamas's people who freed us," she said.
The breaking of the wall began about 2 a.m. Wednesday. Residents of the
border town of Rafah said they awoke to the sound of explosions.
The blasts snapped concrete barriers and sheared through rusted metal
fences. By daybreak, walls lay toppled, felled by men using heavy
machinery. Miles of the barricade lay in ruins.
In Gaza City, an hour from the border, Manal Abu Shamalla, 37, answered
her cellphone at 6:30 a.m.
"The way is open! Come!" her friends urged her, she said.
Her mother lives in Cairo, but because Abu Shamalla has not been able to
obtain from Israel the travel documents she needs to cross the border, she
has not seen her mother in 10 years, she said.
Abu Shamalla and her husband filled the tank of their car, using the last of
the generator fuel they had saved to power the house during blackouts.
She bundled her three children into winter coats and raced with thousands
of other Gazans to the border.
By midday, the family was making its way among the Palestinians streaming
sidewalk-to-sidewalk through the dirt streets of the Egyptian side of Rafah,
which is split by the border wall. With thousands more Gazans arriving each
hour, all with the hope of pushing deeper into Egypt, Abu Shamalla's family
could find no taxis to take them to her mother, and their spirits flagged.
"We only brought milk for the baby," she said, rocking her 3-month-old in
her arms on a street corner.
Gaza City's men piled onto flatbed trucks to rush to the border. City streets
quickly emptied of operable cars. Desperate men clustered at intersections.
"Where are you going?" they shouted at passersby, hoping for rides.
"Rafah?"
At the border, fathers handed toddlers over sections of the wall, so whole
families could have reunions in Egypt with relatives kept out of Gaza for
years by border restrictions. A housewife in a wool coat and carrying a
large purse struggled atop one section of the wall, unable to heft herself
over but peeling off the fingers of those who tried to pull themselves up and
climb past her.
Along one teeming road in the Egyptian part of Rafah, a Hamas security
official who had been stranded on Egypt's side of the border since June --
fearing arrest by Israel during a crossing if he tried to return -- met his
mother and sisters in the surging crowd. "Eight months I haven't seen him!"
his mother exclaimed after a flurry of hugging and kissing.
The man excused himself for not talking. "I'm on the wanted list," he
explained.
Israel accuses Egypt, increasingly sharply, of allowing smugglers to bring
arms and explosives into Gaza. It was clear Wednesday that contraband
and gunmen could cross the border that day with little chance of being
stopped.
Agreements between Egypt and Israel restrict the number of Egyptian
guards at the border to a few hundred. Seven or eight Egyptian border
guards stood lined up along one stretch of no man's land, which was thick
with milling Palestinians and livestock.
The Egyptian guards watched but did not move. "Don't speak to us! Don't
even look at us!" one Egyptian officer shouted after someone in the crowd
moved toward them.
Overwhelmed by the masses of Palestinians filling Egyptian Rafah's streets
and squares, many merchants shuttered their shops and retreated to their
windows and rooftops. In an orchard, an old man and his daughter swung
broken sticks at adults and children who were boldly walking away, arms
laden with oranges.
"When people are under pressure like they are in Gaza, of course they're
going to explode," said Abu Kamal, a resident of Egyptian Rafah who would
give only his nickname. From atop his concrete-block house, he and his
daughters watched the crowds below. Abu Kamal had opened his bicycle
repair shop Wednesday morning, only to close a few minutes later, after
pushing out the Palestinians who had crowded in.
"Where are these people going to sleep?" he mused, watching. "At the end
of the day, there's not going to be a thing left to eat in Rafah."
Egypt appeared to be stopping the Palestinians at El Arish, a city an hour
by car from the border.
But no vehicles could cross the border, and few people could reach that far
on foot. At points along the downed border walls, the streams of
Palestinians heading back to Gaza were thicker than the throngs of
Palestinians coming out.
In Cairo, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak told reporters that his border
guards originally had forced back the Gazans on Tuesday.
"But today a great number of them came back because the Palestinians in
Gaza are starving due to the Israeli siege," he said. "I told them to let them
come in and eat and buy food and then return them later as long as they
were not carrying weapons."
In Jerusalem, a Defense Ministry spokesman, Shlomo Dror, said that "the
focus is on Egypt" and that Israel was watching to see how Egypt handled
the crisis. Hamas's apparent execution of a well-orchestrated, large-scale
breach of the wall reflected badly on Egyptian border security, he said.
"From what I have seen, it's not going to be very easy to repair the wall,"
he said.
Hamas leader Khaled Meshal said from exile in Syria that the movement was
willing to work out a new border arrangement with Egypt and Fatah, the
Palestinian faction that controls the West Bank and the Palestinian
Authority. Ismail Haniyeh, the Hamas prime minister in Gaza, urged
immediate talks with Fatah and Egypt on the topic.
Ashraf Ajrami, a cabinet minister in the West Bank, rejected Hamas's
proposals Wednesday. "Everything Haniyeh is saying is simply to exploit this
situation to win political gains," Ajrami told reporters.
The Palestinian Authority accuses Hamas of endangering the Palestinian
goal of a unified state by administering Gaza on its own.