Palestinians clash over control of border
James Hider in Jerusalem and David Charter in Davos
The Palestinian Government of Mahmoud Abbas said yesterday that it had reached a deal with Egypt to take control of the Gaza border, which Hamas militants breached with blowtorches and explosives last week, allowing hundreds of thousands of people to cross.
Within hours Hamas officials denied that any such agreement side-lining the Islamists had been sealed with Cairo, which is struggling to contain the chaos that erupted on its border last week.
The contradictory reports came amid a flurry of high-level talks – including a meeting between Mr Abbas and Ehud Olmert, the Israeli Prime Minister – to discuss the destruction of the huge, Israeli-built wall on the border of Gaza with Egypt. Hamas smashed the barrier after Israel tightened its blockade on the tiny Mediterranean territory in response to Hamas rocket attacks.
Riyadh al-Maliki, the Palestinian Foreign Minister, said after talks with the Egyptian authorities that they had decided that security forces from the Fatah-led Government of the West Bank would be deployed on the breached border. “If [Hamas] don’t accept it they will be held responsible for the protracted closure of the border crossings,” he said. His administration is engaged in peace talks with Israel after being forced out of Gaza by Hamas fighters last summer.
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Face-saving deal sought to close Gaza border
Uzi Mahnaimi, Tel Aviv and Reham Abd Al-Karim, Gaza
THOUSANDS of Palestinians flooded into Egypt from Gaza for a fourth successive day yesterday as frantic negotiations began to find ways of sealing the border.
Gazans, many of them crossing in cars for the first time, continued to stock up on food, cooking gas, petrol and cigarettes after shortages caused by an Israeli blockade.
The blockade was designed to punish Hamas, the militant Islamic group that controls Gaza, for failing to curb rocket attacks on Israel.
In a meeting due to take place today, Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president and leader of the mainstream faction Fatah, is expected to ask Ehud Olmert, Israel’s prime minister, to hand control of Gaza’s border crossings to his Palestinian National Authority.
This would provide a face-saving route for Hosni Mubarak, Egypt’s president, whose troops have failed to reseal the border. He has shied away from using force, even though his foreign minister admitted yesterday that nearly 40 security personnel had been injured, including two critically, in incidents over the past few days.
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Egypt battles to turn the tide as Hamas knocks new hole in wall
James Hider in Gaza City
Under siege and facing an increasingly restive population chafing at food and fuel shortages caused by an Israeli blockade, Hamas pulled off a brilliant propaganda move this week when it brought down the hated wall on the Egyptian border.
“Hamas should all move to Madison Avenue and ply their trade there,” said Arieh Mekel, an Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman, grudgingly comparing the Islamists to the cream of New York’s PR industry. Other Israeli officials said that with the toppling of the wall Gaza had become Cairo’s headache. The move would finally complete Israel’s disengagement from what it has branded a “hostile entity”.
Egypt was struggling to reseal the border yesterday, turning water cannon on thousands of Palestinians crossing the frontier to buy supplies. When they fired in the air at stone-throwing youths, they got a taste of Gazan fury — armed Hamas fighters rushed in and the police retreated. To reinforce the point that they were in charge, Hamas brought in a bulldozer and ploughed another hole in the broken wall. “Until we have normal crossings we’ll not allow them to close the passages,” said one of the militants.
Hamas had arrived at this point through a dramatic sequence of events — many of which the Israelis, and even some Gazans, suspect were engineered by Hamas itself. The Islamists had stepped up the barrage of Qassam rockets on the Israeli town of Sderot after an Israeli raid that killed 20 Palestinians. In response Israel cut off supplies to Gaza through its border crossings, with vast areas plunged into darkness when it switched off electricity.
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Bulldozer thwarts Egyptians at Gaza border
David Byers, Philippe Naughton, and agencies in Rafah
Palestinians used a bulldozer to smash through the Gaza Strip’s border with Egypt today, destroying part of a barbed-wire fence hastily put up by the Egyptian army to reseal the breached frontier
In the latest twist in the days-old standoff, thousands of Palestinian onlookers gathered by the Rafah crossing at 1300GMT - the deadline at which the Egyptian Army said it would reseal the border - and cheered as militants were seen to repeatedly ram the fence.
Egyptian troops, who had tried to seal off the territory after militants blew up its border wall on Tuesday night, were seen trying to push them back using electric batons as a fresh hole was created in the fence and dozens of Palestinians were seen to spill over the border.
The breach came after a morning of running battles between Palestinian militants, civilians and Egyptian border troops today, which started with Egyptian forces turning water cannon on Palestinians trying to force their way across.
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Israel moves to dump Gaza problem on Egypt
James Hider in Rafah
Israel said that it wanted to wash its hands completely of the Gaza Strip yesterday, as the flow of hundreds of thousands of impoverished Palestinians across the breached border with Egypt showed no sign of letting up.
Israel also advised its citizens to avoid visiting popular tourist destinations in the Sinai desert, which abuts Gaza. It said that it had received specific threats that Palestinian militants now operating in Egypt were planning to abduct Israelis.
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Hamas 'spent months cutting through Gaza wall in secret operation'
James Hider at the Rafah border crossing
As tens of thousands of Palestinians clambered back and forth between the Gaza strip and Egypt today, details emerged of the audacious operation that brought down a hated border wall and handed the Islamist group Hamas what might be its greatest propaganda coup.
Hamas, which took control of the coastal territory last June after a stand-off with Fatah, has denied that its men set off the explosions that brought down as much as two-thirds of the 12-km wall in the early hours.
But a Hamas border guard interviewed by The Times at the border admitted that the Islamist group was responsible and had been involved for months in slicing through the heavy metal wall using oxy-acetylene cutting torches.
That meant that when the explosive charges were set off in 17 different locations between midnight and 1am the 40ft wall came tumbling down, leaving it lying like a broken concertina down the middle of no-man's land as an estimated 350,000 Gazans flooded into Egypt.
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The great escape – or perhaps it is just a gigantic shopping spree
James Hider in Rafah
It may have been the biggest shopping spree in history. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, running out of the bare necessities, swarmed out of Gaza into Egypt yesterday to buy everything they could lay their hands on after Hamas militants blew up a huge metal border wall.
They returned herding goats, sheep, heifers and camels, riding on donkey carts laden with sacks of cement, or festooned with cans of petrol strapped to their bodies, after militants brought Israel’s siege of the coastal territory to a halt, dismantling the 40ft-high (12m) barrier like a broken concertina.
Old women lugged heavy cans of olive oil and children stumbled under the weight of packs of powdered milk, passing even more of the besieged masses still rushing through the gaping breaches to stock up on the basics.
“This is a key victory for Hamas,” crowed Abu Ayman, a grey-bearded Gaza farmer, as he and his son wrestled two calves across the border. He had just paid $1,000 (£500) for the livestock on the Egyptian side of the border. “Before, we couldn’t even find coffins to bury our dead,” he said as people swarmed around him in both directions.
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Pertinent Links:
1) Palestinians clash over control of border
2) Face-saving deal sought to close Gaza border
3) Egypt battles to turn the tide as Hamas knocks new hole in wall
4) Bulldozer thwarts Egyptians at Gaza border
5) Israel moves to dump Gaza problem on Egypt
6) Hamas 'spent months cutting through Gaza wall in secret operation'
7) The great escape – or perhaps it is just a gigantic shopping spree
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