More Gazans Flood Across Border
By STEVEN ERLANGER
New York Times, January 25, 2008
RAFAH, Egypt — Tens of thousands more Palestinians flooded across the breached border crossing from Gaza into Egypt on Thursday, and Egyptian merchants greeted them with a cornucopia of consumer goods and higher prices than on Wednesday, when Hamas militants toppled large sections of the fence. There were many more Egyptian police at the crossings from Rafah, more of them dressed in riot gear and some using batons with small electric charges to keep the large, pushing crowds in some form of order. And on Thursday, too, more Hamas gunmen were visible on the Gaza side, maintaining calm and doing random checks for possibly smuggled weapons. But neither group tried to stop the shoppers and businessmen restocking their wares in Egypt, nor did Hamas make any visible effort to control or tax the thousands of cigarettes coming into Gaza, let alone the televisions, generators, washing machines, milk, cheese, sheep, goats, cows, camels, diesel and gasoline.
More quietly, Hamas gunmen could be seen taking delivery of hundreds of bags of cement. Israel has sharply restricted the import of cement into Gaza, even for aid projects, because it says Hamas diverts the supply to build fortified tunnels and emplacements for use against any major Israeli military action in Gaza.
Both exchange rates and prices were up, as were the amounts Gazans were buying, with clear intent to resell within Gaza. So intense was the trading that even some Palestinians grew worried that there would be a backlash from impoverished Egyptians of Rafah. “This is not so good for the Palestinian people,” said Ahmed Shawa, a Gaza engineer who crossed into Egypt on Thursday. “Prices are becoming very high while people in Egyptian Rafah don’t have bread. If I go to your country and buy everything and you don’t have bread, you’re going to hate me.”
Hamas officials said they took action to open the Egyptian border after Israel last week decided to stop nearly all shipments into Gaza, including industrial diesel needed to run Gaza’s main power plant and gasoline, in an effort to push Gazan gunmen to stop firing rockets into Israeli towns and farms. Under severe international criticism, Israel relented but temporarily, agreeing to supply a week’s worth of fuel, but it limited supplies again after the border breach.
The Egyptian president, Hosni Mubarak, considered his options, but Egyptian officials made it clear on Thursday that while Egypt would not hurt Palestinians seeking food and other goods, it would also not accept a lawless border, open to arms traffic and unregulated travel of gunmen and political extremists. Both Israel and the United States said that it was Egypt’s responsibility to bring the border situation under control. Gen. Ahmed Abdel Hamid, the governor of northern Sinai, estimated that up to 120,000 Palestinians were currently in Egypt, but said they were not being allowed to travel beyond El Arish, which lies slightly beyond Rafah. He said he thought the border might stay open for another “four or five days” and then would be closed pending another agreement on what to do. “You have to see where this problem came from,” General Abdel Hamid said. “Before the dispute between Hamas and Fatah, the border was open every day with no problem. Since the dispute, the border has been closed.”
In fact, before the fighting between the two Palestinian factions over the summer, during which Hamas ousted Fatah from Gaza, the Rafah crossing was closed more often than it was open. But he emphasized that Egypt was not favoring one faction or another, saying: “Egypt is with the legitimate authority,” presumably the Palestinian Authority and its president, Mahmoud Abbas of Fatah.
Mr. Mubarak’s officials said that Egypt would not accept responsibility for supplying Gaza and let Israel off the hook, as some Israeli officials hope. “This is a wrong assumption,” said Hossam Zaki, the spokesman for Egypt’s Foreign Ministry. “The current situation is only an exception and for temporary reasons. The border will go back to normal.” But the definition of normal was left unclear. When Israel pulled its settlers and troops out of Gaza in 2005, the Rafah crossing was opened with great fanfare to allow individuals in and out of Gaza. European Union supervisors were put in place, and Israeli video cameras monitored the traffic. But for security reasons, the crossing was often shut, and it has been shut completely since Hamas took over Gaza. It will be difficult politically now for Mr. Mubarak to reseal the border completely, shutting off any outlet for Gaza. But he has promised Israel that Egypt would coordinate its actions on the Gaza border to preserve security interests of both countries.
In a speech on Thursday, Mr. Mubarak said that “peace efforts cannot endure any other failure and Egypt will not allow the starving of Palestinians in Gaza or that the situation in the strip turns into a humanitarian crisis.” He called on Palestinian factions to work together and said: “No one can outbid Egypt in its support for this silent nation and their just cause.” Egypt, he said, “is doing its utmost in its movements and contacts to end their suffering and to lift the Israeli measures of collective punishment and to bring back the supply of fuel and electricity and humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip.”
Hamas officials want to regulate the border but reopen the crossing again in coordination with Egypt, but also to allow the import and export of goods. A Hamas leader, Mahmoud Zahar, said in an interview that Hamas wanted to end the system under which Israel collects import duties and taxes for the Palestinians. Israel does not give those receipts to Hamas, but only to the Palestinian Authority government, based in Ramallah, in the West Bank. He also noted that the Israeli economy was too expensive for Gazans, while prices of everything from electricity to flour and gasoline were much cheaper in Egypt.
On Thursday, the Israeli deputy defense minister, Matan Vilnai, said openly what some senior Israeli officials would only say anonymously on Wednesday — that Israel would like to hand over responsibility for Gaza to Egypt, in essence, and ironically, supporting the Hamas position. “We need to understand that when Gaza is open to the other side we lose responsibility for it,” Mr. Vilnai said. “So we want to disconnect from it.” He said that Israel’s effort to disengage from Gaza “continues in that we want to stop supplying electricity to them, stop supplying them with water and medicine, so that it would come from another place.” But according to his office, he acknowledged that “we are responsible for it as long as there is no alternative.” Even Hamas argues that Israel continues to be responsible for the well-being of ordinary Gazans because it continues to control Gaza’s sea and air space and the only goods crossings.
On Sunday, Israel’s Supreme Court will hear an emergency appeal by Israeli human-rights groups for an injunction against Israel’s cuts in electricity and in fuel supplies to Gaza. Although Israel promised to deliver 580,000 gallons of industrial diesel this week for the Gaza’s sole power plant, which supplies much of Gaza City, only 333,000 gallons had been delivered by Thursday. The power plant, which had shut down for lack of fuel and is now running only one turbine, will have to shut down again on Sunday unless new supplies are delivered. Normally, Israel and Egypt supply the remainder of Gaza’s power needs.
On the border on Thursday, Gazans and Gaza businessmen hurried to stock up before Cairo decided to take further action. The Egyptians would not allow cars or trucks in from Gaza, only carts drawn by animals, so the area between the Gaza fence and the Egyptian border, known as the Philadelphi route — which had been so carefully patrolled by the Israeli army before it withdrew — became an informal parking lot. There were traffic jams under the broken, bent metal and concrete barriers, and food stalls dotted the area, selling boiled sweets, sugared doughnuts, beans and nuts. Boys carried large boxes of cartons of cigarettes on their shoulders, sent to Egypt on commission by businessmen who will restock and resell. Carts were loaded with bags of cement, Chinese-made generators, foam mattresses and Nautica brand televisions. Women in black niqabs, long cloaks and scarves showing only their eyes, carried large, colorful bags of potato chips or Egyptian-made snack cakes. And many Gazans simply went to buy fresh milk, feta cheese and fill canisters with diesel, gasoline, motor oil and cooking oil. Some went to get cement to seal the graves of their loved ones, which they have had to try to protect with paving stones, metal and boards.
Egyptian businessmen sharply raised prices today, with a generator selling in Cairo for $300 being sold here for $600, said Tawfiq Nofal, a businessman who complained that transport companies were also hiking their prices to bring goods to Rafah. “People are buying but not as we expected,” he said. “Our largest aim now is the Palestinian businessmen.” A little over four gallons of diesel cost almost $19, compared to just under $15 a long walk away in El Arish, complained Hamid Kahlout. “Of course they’re exploiting us. Everyone is playing with us.” Some Egyptians complained that the local market was nearly empty.
The call to prayer was ignored as the shopping and gawking continued. Azza Kamel and her cousins were thrilled, going to the wedding of a relative who was engaged a year ago to a man from Egyptian Rafah. The wedding had to wait for the crossing to open; now it was suddenly on. Ms. Kamel and her family all support Fatah, she said, but were grateful to Hamas for this chance. “Fatah still exists,” she said. “But Hamas has eaten everything.”
Muhammad Gaber, head of patient services at the European Gaza Hospital in Rafah, said he thought the border might stay open another five days or so, to provide “temporary relief” to Gazans. “After that, the Egyptians will have to work with Hamas or maybe the European Union to reorganize the crossing,” he said. But politically, he said: “Mubarak can’t put Gazans back into the same prison. The situation has changed. The pressure on Gaza from Israel has to be lifted.”