Egypt closes breached border with Gaza By IBRAHIM BARZAK, Associated Press Writer FEB 3,08
RAFAH, Gaza Strip - Egyptian troops closed the last breach in Egypt's border with the Gaza Strip Sunday, ending 12 days of free movement for Palestinian residents of the blockaded territory, witnesses and Hamas security officials said. Hamas police aided with the closure, drawing pistols and arresting Palestinians who were throwing stones at Egyptian troops along the frontier. It was a dramatic turnabout for Hamas, whose militants had used explosives to bring down the border wall.The Egyptian troops were allowing Gazans and Egyptians to cross the border to return to their homes on the other side but prevented any new cross-border movement, according to witnesses and Hamas security officials in the border town of Rafah. The Hamas officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the press. Israel issued no immediate comment on the closure.
In Cairo, a spokesman for Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak warned against any future border violations.Egypt is a respected state, its border cannot be breached and its soldiers should not be lobbed with stones, spokesman Suleiman Awwad told reporters after a meeting between Mubarak and the EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana, who is in the region for talks on the border crisis. Egyptian soldiers patrolled in armored personnel carriers and stood in sandbagged emplacements on nearby rooftops, and dozens of Gazans looked on as the Egyptians resealed the border.About 100 Egyptian police formed a human cordon at the border wall's main gate. Dozens of cars and people lined up on either side of the border, some having stocked up on supplies before crossing.Three Palestinians tried to jump over the border wall to enter Egypt to retrieve some merchandise they had stored there. Hamas security, which was patrolling the area in cars and on foot, beat them with batons and the backs of their weapons, then fired in the air to disperse the crowd that had gathered to watch.Hamas militants blew up a section of the Gaza-Egypt border wall on Jan. 23 in an attempt to end a seven-month blockade imposed on Gaza by Israel with Egypt's cooperation. The blockade, which Israel imposed in response to a rocket barrage from Gaza on Israeli border towns, tightened already severely restricted access to the territory since Hamas' Gaza takeover.
The breach in the border allowed hundreds of thousands of Gazans to pour into Egypt to stock up on supplies and visit with friends and relatives they hadn't seen for years.Mahmoud Zahar, a Hamas leader, suggested Saturday that the closure would be temporary while the Egyptians searched for a way to reopen the border. Egyptian officials were not available for comment on the Hamas claims, and it was not clear whether Cairo was considering the group's demand for a say in running the Egypt-Gaza border.Any role for the Islamic militants on the border would be sure to anger the international community and Hamas' archrival, the moderate Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, because it would amount to tacit recognition of Hamas rule in Gaza.EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana, who was in Cairo Sunday for talks with Egyptian and Arab League officials on the Gaza border crisis, said the EU is ready to resume its role on the crossing. We are ready to continue work in case; there is an agreement, he said.Solana will head to Tel Aviv later Sunday for talks with Israeli and Palestinian leaders.At least 17 Palestinians have been arrested in the past days carrying weapons and explosives near the border and other remote parts of the Sinai desert.Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak said Sunday a barrier should be constructed along the desert border between Israel and Egypt.
Building a fence on the Israel-Egypt border is a pressing need, Barak told an Israeli Cabinet meeting, saying the move would protect Israel from militant infiltration and cross-border smuggling.The head of the Hamas government in Gaza, Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, said he would like to see Gaza's economy cut from Israel, and instead receive fuel and electricity from Egypt. We have said from the days of our election campaign that we want to move toward economic disengagement from the Israeli occupation, Haniyeh told the pro-Hamas daily Palestine. Egypt has a greater ability to meet the needs of Gaza.Some Israeli officials believe that would be good for Israel, and Israel's Defense Ministry is drafting an official position on the idea, security officials said Sunday, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to reveal internal ministry discussions. But Egypt, unwilling to assume responsibility for millions of Palestinians and officially recognize Hamas rule in Gaza, has reacted angrily to any such suggestion. An Israeli effort to transfer responsibility for Gaza would be likely to create a serious rupture between the two countries, which signed a peace deal in 1979. Egypt controlled Gaza before Israel captured the area in the 1967 Mideast war. Associated Press Writer Ashraf Sweilam in Rafah, Egypt, contributed to this report.
Israel says Hamas got hi-tech weapons in border breach Sun Feb 3, 9:27 AM ET
JERUSALEM (AFP) - The head of Israel's domestic intelligence agency said on Sunday that massive amounts of sophisticated weaponry had been brought into Gaza during the protracted breach of its border with Egypt. Over the past days, massive amounts of weapons were moved into Gaza, a senior Israeli official quoted Yuval Diskin, the head of the Shin Beth internal security agency, as telling the weekly cabinet meeting.As far as we know, these were weapons of high quality, including long-range rockets, anti-tank and anti-aircraft missiles and other rocket-manufacturing materials that are usually much harder to bring into Gaza, he said.Gaza militants blew open the border between the Hamas-run territory and Egypt on January 23 amid a punishing Israeli blockade, with Egyptian and Islamist forces resealing the frontier on Sunday.The breach -- during which half of Gaza's 1.5 million population is estimated to have crossed the border -- allowed the return of many militants from Iran, Syria and Egypt, Diskin said.These people have accumulated a great deal of knowledge and were trained in Iran and other places and are now expected to contribute to the improvement of terrorist activities in Gaza, he said.Israel has launched repeated air and ground operations against Gaza militants in a bid to stop persistent rocket fire from the territory. Both the rocket attacks and the Israeli reprisals have dropped off drastically since shortly before the border breach.
The Shin Beth chief said the Sinai peninsula, just across the border into Egypt, had now become the soft belly of Israel's security because terror organisations have transferred dozens of terror activists there.The Shin Beth has identified at least 30 routes to penetrate Israel from the Sinai into the Negev, Diskin added.Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Defence Minister Ehud Barak are pushing for the resurrection of a mothballed plan to build a barrier the entire length of Israel's 250-kilometre (150-mile) border with Egypt.There is a real need for a fence and we are holding discussions on the issue, the official quoted Olmert as saying.The plan to construct a border barrier was first brought up several years ago but abandoned because of the high estimated costs.
Al-Qaida affiliate claims embassy attack By AHMED MOHAMED, Associated Press Writer Sat Feb 2, 7:55 PM ET
NOUAKCHOTT, Mauritania - An al-Qaida affiliate claimed responsibility for a shooting attack on the Israeli Embassy in Mauritania's capital, saying it was retaliating against Israeli policies in the Gaza Strip, an Arab television station reported Saturday. At least one gunman opened fire on the Israeli Embassy in Mauritania early Friday, setting off a gunbattle with guards that wounded three bystanders, including three French citizens. Guards at the embassy returned fire, but no embassy staff were wounded.
The Arab satellite TV station Al-Jazeera said that Al-Qaida in Islamic North Africa, an affiliate of Osama bin Laden's terror network, issued a statement saying it had carried out the attack as a reprisal against Israel's actions in Gaza.It was not possible to verify the authenticity of the claim.Israel has been restricting deliveries of gas and other supplies to Gaza in response to rocket attacks targeting Israeli towns. The Israeli clampdown has prompted protests in Mauritania, an overwhelmingly Muslim nation.Al-Qaida in Islamic North Africa, formerly known as the Salafist Group for Call and Combat, is based in Algeria and has claimed responsibility for near-simultaneous bombings at U.N. offices in Algiers and a government building on Dec. 11 that killed at least 37 people. The same group also purportedly said in an audiotape that it carried out the killing of several soldiers in Mauritania in December.
Mauritania has had relatively few incidents of terrorism in recent years. But on Christmas Eve, gunmen killed four French tourists as they picnicked on the side of a road — an attack the government blamed on a terror sleeper cell affiliated with al-Qaida.One year ago, a ranking al-Qaida leader released a videotape calling for an attack on the Israeli Embassy in Mauritania, according to a transcript provided by Ben Venzke, who heads the IntelCenter based in Alexandria, Va.Israel has had diplomatic relations with Mauritania since 1999, but some residents resent the Israeli presence in the overwhelmingly Islamic nation. Mauritania is one of only three Arab League nations with diplomatic ties with Israel. The other two are Egypt and Jordan.
