Thousands flee Gaza into Egypt

[Sand 5]

http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/meast/01/23/...gaza/index.html

[Ban Hammer 13,445]

Tens of thousands flee Gaza for Egypt

RAFAH, Gaza Strip - Tens of thousands of Palestinians poured from the Gaza Strip into Egypt Wednesday after masked gunmen with explosives destroyed most of the seven-mile barrier dividing the border town of Rafah.

Gazans crossed on foot, in cars or in donkey carts to buy cigarettes, fuel, and other items made scarce by an Israeli blockade of their impoverished territory. Across the coastal strip, home to 1.5 million Palestinians, people pushed into buses and piled into rickety pickup trucks heading to Egypt and a rare opportunity to escape months of isolation.

Police from the militant group Hamas, which controls Gaza, directed the traffic. Egyptian border guards took no action.

"Freedom is good. We need no border after today," said unemployed 29-year-old Mohammed Abu Ghazal.

Hamas did not take responsibility for knocking down the border barrier erected by Israel as fighting intensified with militants after the outbreak of the second Palestinian uprising in 2000. But it seemed unlikely the move could have been undertaken without Hamas' approval.

The group's supreme leader, Khaled Mashaal, said from Damascus, Syria that Hamas was willing to work out a new border arrangement with Egypt and Hamas' rival, moderate Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak said that he had ordered his troops to allow the Palestinians to cross into Egypt from the Gaza Strip because they were starving.

Mubarak told reporters at the Cairo International Book fair that when Palestinians began breaking through border in force, he told his men to let them in to buy food before escorting them out.

"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," he said.

Gaza has been virtually sealed since Hamas seized control of the territory by force in June. Gazans are facing critical shortages of electricity, fuel and other supplies, although they have not yet led to starvation.

Any easing of restriction could help stabilize Hamas' rule.

Israel expressed concern that militants and weapons might be entering Gaza amid the chaos, and said responsibility for restoring order lay with Egypt.

Egypt has largely kept its border with Gaza closed since the Hamas takeover amid concerns of a spillover of Hamas-style militancy into Egypt. But Egypt's government is also under popular pressure at home to help the impoverished Gazans.

Egyptian public opinion is sympathetic to the Palestinians, and most political analysts believe Mubarak's regime would face a serious crisis if its forces opened fire on Palestinians during a border melee.

Israel also is in a difficult situation. It is concerned about the free flow of militants and weapons into Gaza, but cannot be seen as criticizing Egypt too strongly, for fear of alienating an important Arab country.

"Israel has no forces in Gaza or Egypt, and the Egyptians control the border, and therefore it is the responsibility of Egypt to ensure that the border operates properly according to the signed agreements. We expect the Egyptians to solve the problem," said Arye Mekel, a spokesman for Israel's Foreign Ministry.

"Obviously we are worried about the situation. It could potentially allow anybody to enter," Mekel said.

Palestinians have broken through the Egypt border several times since Israel pulled out of Gaza in 2005 and stopped patrolling the border. But none of the previous breaches approached the scale of Wednesday's destruction, which demolished two-thirds of the seven-mile border barrier.

Gazans walked unhindered over the toppled metal plates that once made up the border barrier, carrying goats, chickens and crates of Coca-Cola. Some brought back televisions and car tires. One man bought a motorcycle. Vendors sold soft drinks and baked goods to the crowds.

Within hours, shops on the Egyptian side of the divided border town of Rafah had run out of most of their wares.

Ibrahim Abu Taha, 45, a Palestinian father of seven, was in the Egyptian section of Rafah with his two brothers and $185 in his pocket.

"We want to buy food, we want to buy rice and sugar, milk and wheat and some cheese," Abu Taha said, adding that he would also buy cheap Egyptian cigarettes.

Abu Taha said he could get such basic foods in Gaza, but at three times the cost.

Moussa Zuroub, a 28-year-old Palestinian, carried his young daughter Aseel on his shoulders, trudging through the muddy streets of Egyptian Rafah.

"I'm coming just to break that ice — that all my life, I'd never left Gaza before," Zuroub said.

In Egyptian Rafah, a market stall selling pistols and ammunition clips for Kalashnikov assault rifles had no customers Wednesday. Weapons are generally brought into Gaza through smuggling tunnels under the Gaza-Egypt border.

An off-duty Hamas policeman, who only gave his first name, Abdel Rahman, said there was no need to buy weapons from Egypt.

"You can buy weapons in Gaza, guns and RPGs," he said, adding that they were easier to find than cancer medicine or Coca-Cola.

misplaced priorities, anyone?

The destruction of the barrier began before dawn Wednesday, when Palestinian gunmen began using land mines, blowing holes in the border barrier that runs through Rafah, witnesses said. There were 17 explosions in all, Hamas security officials said. At first, Hamas and Egyptian security officers prevented people from getting through, witnesses said, but by morning thousands of Gazans had massed at the border and overwhelmed police began letting people cross.

Most Egyptian security and police were later pulled out from the immediate vicinity of the border, Egyptian security officials said.

International reaction to the dramatic events was muted.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said the U.S. wants to see stability in the region, but that "most importantly both the security concerns of Israel and the humanitarian concerns of Gazans be met."

The European Union was to issue a statement later Wednesday.

Wednesday's chaotic scenes came almost a week after Israel imposed a tight closure on Gaza, backed by Egypt, in response to a spike in Gaza rocket attacks on Israeli border towns.

Pictures of children marching mournfully with candles and people lining up at closed bakeries in a blacked-out Gaza City evoked urgent appeals from governments, aid agencies and the U.N. for an end to the closure.

Israel maintained that Hamas was creating an artificial crisis but nonetheless eased the closure slightly on Tuesday, transferring fuel to restart Gaza's only power plant, and also sent in some cooking gas, food and medicine. Israel has pledged to continue limited shipments because of concerns about a possible humanitarian crisis, but Israeli defense officials said Wednesday there would be no new shipments for the time being.

The rocket fire by Gaza militants has sent residents in Israeli border communities scrambling for shelter several times a day. The rockets have traumatized many area residents and killed 12 Israelis in six years. The attacks have persisted despite the closure.

In a clash early Wednesday with Israeli forces near the closed Sufa crossing into Gaza, a Hamas militant was killed, Palestinian officials said. The Israeli military said soldiers exchanged fire with Palestinian militants in the area.

link

[mawilson 2,133]

Thank you, Egypt. The Palestinians are your problem now.

[PalestineMyHeart 1,897]

They neither see nor remember

By Amira Hass

The security establishment was quick on Monday to boast of the success of its tactic of escalation against Gaza: Look, the number of Qassams declined. By the time these lines are published, the security establishment may spin another logical axiom: Since we renewed the supply of diesel fuel on a one-time basis, the Palestinians have gone back to firing Qassams. The conclusion: Continue the escalation. The logic of escalation is the middle name of the current defense minister, Ehud Barak, and many Israelis are adopting it.

Barak was prime minister in September 2000, when the Israel Defense Forces responded with escalation to popular demonstrations against the Israeli occupier and to the throwing of stones: lethal fire against civilians, among them many children. Not surprisingly, the Palestinians did not understand the lesson and turned to escalation tactics of their own. That is how we reached the point where we are now - homemade rockets of all kinds, which become even developed, the more Israel escalates its punishment measures in response to them.

Books, articles and one or two films have have already discussed, albeit tardily, the foolishness of the tactic of escalation. But that does not matter to those who support the application of more and more pressure on the 1.5 million residents of the Strip. This shows that they - like their defense minister and the rest of the political leadership - are suffering from four failings: amnesia, shortsightedness, disorientation and learning disabilities.

Amnesia allows exponents of this position to ponder the ostensibly welcome results of the escalation for a period of time ranging from days to months. Israelis forget the deadly Israeli attack that preceded the last Qassam barrage. And because they do not connect today's Qassams to those killed at the beginning of the intifada, that is, to the steps of escalation that the army took seven years ago, they cannot imagine what the result will be of the interruption to the water supply due to the power cuts; the collapse of the sewerage system; the insult inherent in dealing only with food and the cold. Because of amnesia, Israelis do not think about the future: about the Palestinian, all-Muslim, all-Arab attitudes and positions that are being formulated at this very moment, which will end up shattering any temporary calm.

The shortsightedness of those who support escalation allows them to watch television broadcasts from Gaza - of children crying and spokesmen pleading or raging - and feel these are signs that the current escalation is working. They do not see beyond the screen. They do not see the mutual help, the resourcefulness and the humor people are showing, the stubborness and the political and popular pressure on their Egyptian neighbor.

Disorientation causes supporters of escalation to believe that Gaza is really a separate geographic and demographic region, that it does not not belong, that the fate of its inhabitants means nothing to Palestinians in other areas. Disorientation causes Israelis to relate to the Green Line and treat it as sacred only when Palestinians cross it and strike at them. They forget that they - that is, we Israelis - are crossing the Green Line at any given moment: with settlements and gunfire and separate roads, shelling and bombardment and military orders. And this began long before any Palestinians learned how to manufacture Qassams.

It all connects to learning disabilities. The escalation, its proponents are convinced, will lead to popular pressure on the Hamas government. But the Palestinians do not forget that various forms of siege and closure, economic attrition, land expropriation and foot-dragging in negotiations, are testimony to the failure of the Palestinian Authority and its elected president, Mahmoud Abbas, much more than they are to the failure of Hamas.

Those who champion escalation ignore the fact that hermetic closure of all crossings into Gaza reminds the world what it loves to forget: Israel is the occupier. The aggressor. The learning disabled and the short-sighted do not see the moral - and not just security - bankruptcy of the escalation policy. Others will do that in their place.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/947256.html

[Ban Hammer 13,445]

so wom, what would you think if mexico started lobbing missiles into san antonio? after all, that used to be their territory.....

[Alhamdulillah 0]

what would you think if mexico started lobbing missiles into san antonio? after all, that used to be their territory.....

There's no need.... they'll just keep hopping the border and slowly taking over...

[eric&gen 0]

Mexico has missiles? They be more like lobbing tacos burritos and donkeys over the borders lol.

[almaty 19]

first of all, i resent the statement about the backwardness of our allies to to the south.,...

also, the comment about lobbing donkeys.......

Edited January 23, 2008 by almaty

[mawilson 2,133]

first of all, i resent the statement about the backwardness of our allies to to the south.,...

also, the comment about lobbing donkeys.......

:lol:

[PalestineMyHeart 1,897]

[eric&gen 0]

Geez #######

[PalestineMyHeart 1,897]

[Hilarious Clinton 452]

I see he brought a date.

[sandinista! 1,816]

*reported

[eric&gen 0]

*reported

waaaa you need to go suck on a baby bottle.