Egypt Seals Gaza Border At Israel's Demand

by Adam Morrow

(IPS) CAIRO -- A new uncertainty has settled on Egypt's border with the Gaza Strip despite a resealing of the front.

The border was sealed Sept. 20 following a chaotic influx of an estimated 100,000 Palestinians shortly after Israeli withdrawal from the territory.

The Palestinians crossed into Egypt to visit relatives, buy cheap goods, and celebrate their freedom of movement after almost four decades of border closure.

Israel responded angrily to the unregulated traffic, citing its view of the border as a conduit for smuggling arms to Palestinian resistance groups.

"The collapse of the Gaza-Egyptian border ... is extremely worrisome to Jerusalem," the Israeli daily Haaretz reported Sept. 15. "Israel is fearful not only of massive arms smuggling into Gaza, and consequently to the West Bank but also, and particularly, that al-Qaeda operatives will be able to enter Gaza freely."

Israeli foreign ministry spokesman Mark Regev told reporters that the border opening gave terrorist elements easy access to the Hebrew state.

"We're talking about Iran, we're talking about elements in Syria, we're talking about groups like Hezbollah, and we're talking also about international terrorist groups like al-Qaeda," Regev was quoted as saying.

After repeated Israeli complaints, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas announced Sept. 18 that traffic out of Gaza would be halted. By Sept. 20 the crossing was sealed from the west by Egyptian authorities. Their Palestinian counterparts followed suit shortly afterward.

But the sudden closure left many Palestinians stranded on the Egyptian side. "The Egyptian side is letting some through, opening the crossing for two hours at a time, with coordination with the Israelis," Emad Gad, an expert on Israeli affairs at the state-run Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies, told IPS.

But, he added, "while Egyptian troops now control the crossing, they can't reopen it without first reaching agreement with the Israelis." This suggests there is still a degree of Israeli control over the border. "Egypt is still trying to finalize the details with Israel regarding the border crossing," Gad said.

Gad says that while Egypt and Israel have reached agreement on the administration of the border itself, the delicate status of the crossing points, chiefly Rafah, has not yet been settled.

Egypt and Israel agreed in August to allow deployment of 750 Egyptian police to the border area, considered a demilitarized zone under the 1979 Camp David peace agreement. But the agreement did not cover the crossings.

The entry and exit procedures therefore remain unclear. "This all might take a while," a security official was quoted as saying by the government broadsheet Al-Ahram Weekly. "After everything went out of control earlier, the situation is now being kept under tight scrutiny."

The situation has been made more difficult by the recent escalation of violence inside the Gaza Strip.

The Israeli military launched strikes with artillery and aircraft on targets inside the newly liberated territory Thursday following a series of rocket attacks into Israel by Palestinian militants inside the strip.

Despite a pledge by some Palestinian factions to halt attacks on the Jewish state, Israeli defense minister Shaul Mofaz has said he will continue with the offensive into the territory. "As long as there is no quiet, the terror organizations will not know quiet," Mofaz was quoted as saying.