Rafah crossing opens for 1 day, some 300 Palestinians enter Gaza
By Avi Issarcharoff, Haaretz Correspondent and The Associated Press

Egypt and Israel reopened the Rafah border crossing on Tuesday for the first time in three weeks, triggering a rush to the border by thousands of Palestinians who had been waiting in Egypt.

About 300 Palestinians entered the Gaza Strip in the first hour of the crossing’s opening. Another 5,000 Palestinians were waiting on the Egyptian side to go back to Gaza.

The crossing would be open for only one day, Palestinian official Hany Jabour told The Associated Press at the crossing. He said Israel had imposed the time limit on the opening.

In Jerusalem, the Defense Ministry said a decision would be taken Tuesday evening on whether to keep the border open indefinitely. A military spokesman told the Associated Press that the European monitors at Rafah crossing would assess whether the border could remain open.

“I will never, never, never come to Egypt again because of the pain and suffering I have endured with my wife,” said Aboul Khair, 50, a barber from Khan Yunis in the Strip, who had been waiting for three weeks to return with his wife.

A Palestinian student, Heba al-Qaysi, 21, said she had run out of money and had been reduced to sleeping under the stars because of the prolonged closure.

“I came to Egypt to renew my visa for Saudi Arabia,” she said as she waited to cross Tuesday. “I won’t ever come back to Egypt after the humiliation we suffered.”

News of the opening spread fast on the Egyptian side and the road between Rafah and El-Arish, the biggest town in northern Sinai, was quickly filled with cars and minibuses carrying Palestinians toward the border.

Jabour said that on the Gaza side, there were lots of empty buses waiting to take the Palestinians to various places in the Strip.

The crossing was closed on June 25 after Palestinian militants raided an Israel Defense Forces military outpost next to the Strip’s border and kidnapped an soldier.

But by then there was already a backlog of Palestinians waiting to cross from Egypt as the border had been open only intermittently for the previous week because the Israelis had warned the European monitors at the crossing of a high security risk.

PLO official Saeb Erekat on Monday said that the chief inspector of the European Union reached an agreement with Israel on opening the crossing. The anguish of those stranded on the Egyptian side of the border would now be alleviated, Erekat said.

Eight Palestinians died in the past week after staying at the border without proper medical treatment, shelter and water supplies. Among them were 19-year-old Muna Ismail who returned from surgery in Cairo and died after her condition deteriorated and Hamza Abu Taleb, an 18-month-old toddler who died of a heat stroke.