Stranded on the Egypt-Gaza Border

Israel's Closure of Crossing Prevents Thousands From Returning Home

RAFAH, Egypt, Aug. 1 -- Like thousands of other Palestinians in the Gaza Strip who do not have access to advanced medical care, Hani Hindi traveled across the border to Cairo for specialized treatment. Three months ago, Hindi said, he had been shot by Israeli soldiers in the southern Gaza town of Khan Younis while installing a rooftop satellite dish.

But when he tried to return home two weeks ago, Hindi said, he was stunned to find that Israel, which controls all access to Gaza with fences and military patrols, had closed the gates on July 17 and was letting no one in or out.

Hindi, 22, and his wife, Malina, who is eight months pregnant, have been stranded since then at the Rafah border crossing with about 2,500 other Palestinians who are unable to cross into Gaza but lack the money or travel papers necessary to return to Egypt.

Hundreds of men, women and children -- many of whom, like Hindi, are returning home after medical procedures not available in the Gaza Strip -- are crowded into the crossing's arrival and departure halls, according to aid groups and people inside reached by cellular telephone.

Temperatures soar above 100 during the day and drop into the 60s at night. Many people are sleeping on flattened cardboard boxes surrounded by mountains of luggage or in makeshift tents set up outside. Blankets, water and toilets are scarce, and there are no showers or cooking facilities. The Egyptian Red Crescent Society has set up a small clinic, and two ambulances stand at the ready.

Egyptian police refused to allow a Washington Post reporter to enter the border crossing on Sunday to observe conditions and talk to people stranded there. Six people inside were interviewed by phone; two others were interviewed through the large iron gates at the Egyptian entrance to the crossing.

"It's awful," said Maha Jundia, 35, an official with the Palestinian Foreign Ministry who arrived at the crossing more than two weeks ago after attending a government training course in China. Jundia does not have money for a hotel or to go to Cairo to wait out the impasse.

"We sleep here on the floor, children all over the place, sick people," she said in a telephone interview. "Some Palestinians and Egyptians who live in the area brought food and stuff, but it is not enough. They brought enough for hundreds, but we are thousands."

"There are hundreds of children," said Sigrid Bovsor, 37, a medical statistician at St. Georg Hospital in Hamburg, who was on her way to Gaza to visit her husband's family when the border was closed. "They play with everything -- stones, broken things, empty bottles, their shoes," she said in an interview at the gate Sunday before Egyptian police ordered her away. "It's really boring."

Lt. Yaniv Alon, a spokesman for the Israeli army's Gaza liaison office, said Israel closed the border "due to a security alert regarding an attempt to dig a tunnel under the crossing." Palestinian militants dug a 1,000-foot-long tunnel under an Israeli army post in the southern Gaza Strip earlier this summer and detonated what they said were 3,000 pounds of explosives, collapsing a concrete building, killing one Israeli soldier and injuring five others.

An Israeli military spokesman said Egyptian and Palestinian authorities were told in advance of plans to close the crossing "to prevent the gathering of people." He said the Israeli government had offered to allow Palestinians to cross into Israel 27 miles south at a new border crossing facility and then be transported back up to the Gaza Strip, but that the Palestinians had refused.

Palestinians said the Israeli offer was limited to about 200 people per day, which they said was inadequate given the number of people stranded at Rafah. Other Palestinians opposed the deal on principle, saying Palestinians should not be forced to transit through Israel and be subjected to aggressive security checks when Egypt and the Gaza Strip share a seven-mile border.

Physicians for Human Rights, one of several groups that appealed to Israel's high court last week to open the border, said in a statement that the southern crossing proposal was a "symbolic" solution that was "not truly an option."

The situation underscores Palestinian concerns about Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's proposal to withdraw Israeli troops and settlers from Gaza. Under the plan, Israel would continue to occupy a thin strip of land along the border between Egypt and Gaza, allowing Israel to seal off Gaza.