Palestinians Pour into Egypt over Israeli Frontier Wall
By Diane Smith
14:32, January 23rd 2008
63 votes
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Palestinians Pour into Egypt over Israeli Frontier Wall

The Israeli blockade on Gaza Strip caused its inhabitants to go over a border wall that was previously blown up by militants and get their short supplies of food and fuel from Egypt.

This dramatic scene occurred on Wednesday, when tens of thousands poured into neighboring Egypt and paid for their supplies with Egyptian pounds and Israeli shekels according to the local shopkeepers.

According to the inhabitants of the Egyptian part of the city of Rafah, in which the Gazans made their “shopping”, the frontier wall was blown up by militants who set the explosives during the night. The wall was built by the Israeli in 2004 a year before it pulled troops and settlers from the territory. It stretches along 200 meters and, until the explosions, was 6-meters high (20 feet).

Egyptian authorities deployed the riot police to intervene, but the deployed forces intervened by watching the desperate people pour into the city’s shops and this just a day after they drove back Gazans who stormed the Rafah crossing.

"I have bought everything I need for the house for months. I have bought food, cigarettes and even two gallons of diesel for my car," said Gazan Mohammed Saeed for Reuters.

This episode of the Gaza Strip history comes as a new challenge to Israeli efforts to keep pressure on the Gaza Strip, despite the international disagreement regarding the shortages in the region populated by about 1,500,000 people.

The fall of the frontier wall follows the Israeli decision to allow industrial diesel fuel to enter the Gaza Strip for one day only on Tuesday, after the blockade caused the Strip's only local power plant to shut down. Approximately 800,000 Gazans had no heating and were forced to use candles for light.

The flood of Gazans into the Egyptian part of the Rafah city also puts Israel into a fragile diplomatic balancing act with its first Arab peace partner.

"We expect the Egyptians will solve the problem," Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Arye Mekel, who abstained from criticizing Cairo as Israel had done regarding Egypt's failure to curb weapons smuggling into the Gaza Strip through tunnels running under Rafah.



© 2007 - 2008 - eFluxMedia
Tags: Gaza, Israel, Egypt
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