Posted on 08/10/2008 4:38:29 PM PDT by mojito
Hundreds of Hamas supporters demonstrated Sunday at the Rafah border crossing in protest against the continued closure of the terminal.
The demonstrators called on Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak to reopen the terminal and condemned the Arab countries for failing to work toward lifting the blockade that was imposed on the Gaza Strip more than a year ago.
Egypt dispatched about 700 border guards to the Egyptian side of the terminal to foil any attempt by the protesters to infiltrate.
The tough security measures, as well as warnings by top Egyptian government officials, apparently deterred the Hamas supporters from breaching the border.
Sources close to Hamas said over the weekend that the movement was planning to call on its supporters to storm the Rafah border crossing to embarrass the Egyptians and force them to reopen it.
Addressing the demonstrators, Ahmed Bahr, acting speaker of the Hamas-dominated Palestinian Legislative Council criticized the Egyptians for refusing to reopen the border.
He reminded President Mubarak of his earlier statement that Egypt would not allow the Palestinians to starve.
Bahr also lashed out at the Egyptian authorities for refusing to allow a senior Hamas delegation to travel to a number of Arab countries through the Rafah terminal. "A few days ago we received an invitation from Arab parliamentarians to travel to Arab countries, but we were surprised when the Egyptian authorities refused to give us permission to leave the Gaza Strip," he said.
Egypt, he added, no longer has an excuse to keep the border closed, particularly since Palestinian patients were dying every day due to the lack of adequate medical treatment.
Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum said Sunday's demonstration was aimed at reflecting the state of anger and frustration in the Gaza Strip against the continued closure of the border.
"Today we wanted to send a message to the Egyptian and Arab leaderships about the need to end the siege against 1.5 million Palestinians," he said. "Those who are refusing to lift the siege are actually taking part in the siege against the Palestinians."
Sounds like we could learn a thing or two about border security from the Egyptians.
Perhaps is was a tactical error on Hamas's part the first time they blew the fence down when they handed 3 $100 dollar bills to anyone that wanted to go shopping in Egypt. They got thousands of takers, but the Egyptians did not think it was fun when they found out it was all Iranian supplied counterfeit money. That really hurt all the Egyptian's shops on the Egypt side of the border.
...particularly since Palestinian patients were dying every day due to the lack of adequate medical treatment.
Hamas should stop shooting people in the knees and tossing them off of buildings. That would help more than medical treatment after the fact. Funny, we used to hear all this whine about the Jews, now its Muslims on Muslims. That is one thing about being a Palestinian, you got a face even a mother would strap explosives on.
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open fire on anyone attempting to breach the border does it every time.
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