Tens of thousands of Palestinians poured into Egypt from the Gaza Strip yesterday through a border wall blown up by militants and stocked up on food and fuel in short supply due to an Israeli blockade.
"Those people are hungry for freedom, for food and for everything," said an Egyptian shopkeeper who gave her name only as Hamida, as she surveyed shelves that had been emptied swiftly by Gazans paying with Egyptian pounds and Israeli shekels.
Residents of Rafah, a divided town straddling the Egypt-Gaza frontier, said militants set off explosions overnight that demolished about 200 meters of the now-rusting, 6-meter metal border wall erected by Israel in 2004, a year before it pulled troops and settlers from the territory.
The fall of the Rafah wall punched a new hole in Israeli efforts to keep pressure on the Gaza Strip in the face of an international outcry over shortages in the territory Palestinians call a giant jail.
A border terminal in Rafah, once a main avenue to the outside world for Gazans, has been largely closed since Hamas Islamists opposed to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' peace efforts with Israel violently took over the Gaza Strip in June.
Egyptian riot police sent to reinforce the border mainly stood aside and let the Palestinians through, witnesses said, a day after they drove back Gazans who stormed the Rafah crossing.
In Cairo, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak said he told the security forces: "Let them come in to eat and buy food." After the Gazans do so, Mubarak said, they can go back "as long as they are not carrying weapons".
Israel, saying it hoped to curb militants' rocket attacks, tightened its Gaza border closure last week, cutting fuel shipments to a main power plant and petrol stations and stopping aid that included food and other humanitarian supplies.
Pushing a trolley among the Rafah crowds, Mohammed Saeed said: "I have bought everything I need for the house for months. I have bought food, cigarettes and even two gallons of diesel for my car."
Umm Raid, a 42-year-old Gazan housewife who crossed the border with two of her children, said she came to buy them milk and get medicine for diabetes.
In a televised speech in Gaza City, Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh said the group was ready for a dialogue with Abbas' Fatah faction and Egypt on steps to reopen border crossings and share in their administration.
"We do not want to control everything, we are part of the Palestinian people," Haniyeh said. Abbas' Prime Minister, Salam Fayyad, has proposed the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority run border crossings, an offer Israel has so far rebuffed.
Source: China Daily/Agencies
|
Comment
Tell A Friend
Print Format
Save Article