Egypt-Gaza Crossing Closed, Despite Agreement
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RAFAH BORDER CROSSING, Egypt – The checkpoint here is a kind of purgatory for Ruweida Arafat. Ms. Arafat, who is no relation to former Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, has for three straight nights slept with 19 other women in the small, semi-exposed basement of a concrete mosque about 15 yards from the guard post.
There are no toilets, and so she has had to relieve herself in a nearby field where sheep graze on scattered garbage. For meals, this 68-year-old woman who suffers from rheumatism, subsists on chocolates and potato chips sold from a gazebo attached to the mosque, under a hand-painted sign that translates as “The prophet’s trip from Mecca to al-Aqsa and from al-Aqsa to Heaven.” It seems flies outnumber the people underneath 10-to-1.
This is the scene at the border crossing between Egypt and the semi-autonomous Palestinian territory of Gaza five days after Secretary of State Rice announced that a deal had been struck to reopen it. And for about 10 hours last Tuesday, hundreds of Palestinian Arabs were permitted to cross back and forth.
It has since closed, and for travelers who lack the money for a motel, the mosque, the snack bar, and the road itself have become a makeshift home. The diplomatic success touted by Ms. Rice last Monday is on its way to becoming a humanitarian disaster less than one week later.
“Is this proper for any human being?” Ms. Arafat asks. “They tell me to go to Cairo or Rafah for a room, but I have spent all of my money on travels.” Ms. Arafat was with seven women returning from a religious pilgrimage to Mecca and Medina.
A 70-year-old Bedouin dressed in beige linens coated in dust, Abdul Hakim, said he came here on Tuesday evening after reading that the Gaza border would be open. “Because the newspaper said we could come back, that’s why we came here,” Mr. Hakim said. “But we are here and they have closed the border.”
While Israel last week agreed to hand over authority for patrolling the border to Egyptian soldiers and the Palestinian Authority, the directives of that agreement are still being implemented. The Israelis will not allow the border to open permanently until E.U. officials and cameras are in place to monitor the foot traffic to Gaza from Egypt. A few years ago, a secret tunnel was found nearby that Israeli authorities said was for the transport of illegal weapons used against the Jewish state’s civilians.
Egyptian guards know the story of the tunnels very well, but when asked whether they are on guard for the transport of explosives, they shrug it off. “They only reason why there was a tunnel is because the Palestinians need food in Gaza and this was the only way they could get it,” one guard, who asked that he not be named, said. Another Egyptian police officer at the border said, “We are told to look for terrorists and explosives, but we don’t find any. This is something the Israelis say, but it’s not true.”
Many Egyptians believe that Israel exaggerates threats to its security, but the fact that this view is shared by some of the people whom Israel has entrusted to guard the Gaza border with Egypt ought to concern Prime Minister Sharon’s government. So far it has not, at least not officially. “Israel thought this was a positive stand for Egypt to participate in the efforts to help Israel …with Gaza without the need for Israeli soldiers to stay there,” a press consular for the Israeli embassy in Cairo, Yaacov Setty, said. “All parties know the threats that are being dealt with between Gaza and the Egyptian side. I think the fact that Israel agreed on the deployment of the border speaks for itself.”
Under the agreement, an Israeli outpost a few miles away in a town called Kerem Shalom will receive real-time video and data from the border at Rafah, but Palestinian Authority officials will determine who gets to come inside Gaza or not. A press statement released last week from the Palestinian minister of civil affairs, Mohammed Dahlan, said, “Israel doesn’t have the right to prevent any Palestinian citizen from traveling through Rafah terminal.”
Back at the border crossing, most of the four dozen people living around the complex blame Israel for the fact that they have to wait to enter Gaza. But there is also some blame for the Egyptians who allow scores of travelers who come to this checkpoint to wait without shelter, blankets, or adequate food. An old man holding a cup of ice containing vials of insulin wagged his finger at a guard behind a mirrored sliding window. “Can you please put this in a refrigerator? It will spoil,” he yelled. He waited, but there was no response.