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Gazans Stream Into Egypt As Border Wall Is Breached
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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.
