Border stays closed without international agreement

Palestinians will not open their border with Egypt unilaterally, Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas said today, answering Israeli concerns and illustrating how much the poverty-stricken seaside territory remains dependent on its Jewish neighbour, despite Israel’s pullout.

Abbas spoke a day after his security forces plugged the last holes in the border fortifications, ending a week of chaos during which thousands of Gazans and Egyptians flooded across the frontier without controls. “The (border) terminal will be open when there is an international agreement,” Abbas said.

“We want to do the right job at the right time because we want to act as a state, as a responsible authority,” Abbas said. “Therefore, we are following up on the subject seriously with our brothers in Egypt. Until we reach agreement, we should be patient.”

Israel closed the Rafah crossing between Gaza and Egypt when it withdrew its forces from Gaza last week. Israel left without reaching agreement with Egypt and the Palestinians on how to operate Rafah.

In the meantime, Israel will let some Palestinians leave Gaza through Israel, Palestinian official Nasser Sarraj said.

Fifty Palestinians – medical patients, students and Palestinians with foreign residency – will be allowed to travel each day through Israel to the Allenby Bridge, the crossing between the West Bank and Jordan, Sarraj said.

Chaos reined at the border after Israel’s pullout, with thousands of Palestinians crossing into Egypt and coming back with contraband and weapons.

At the evacuated Israeli settlements, thousands of Palestinians scavenged through the rubble, and some stole valuable equipment from greenhouses the Israelis left behind.

Today 16 new vehicles contributed by Holland reached the Palestinian security forces through the Erez crossing from Israel, the Israeli military liaison office said.

The disorder has cost Abbas politically as he struggles for supremacy over Hamas, with parliamentary elections set for January. Lawmakers set a vote of no confidence in the government of his prime minister, Ahmed Qureia, for next Monday.

Nabil Amr of Fatah, the party of Abbas and Qureia, charged that the Palestinian Authority has failed in Gaza.

“The Palestinian Authority appeared very weak before strong groups (like Hamas),” he said. “The PA has no political, administrative, security and development program for handling the (Israeli) withdrawal.”

The Rafah crossing has been an emotional focus since the pullout, as Gaza’s only Israel-free exit.

The crossing is considered a lifeline for Gazans, who charge Israel with turning their territory into a prison by closing it.

But crossings into Israel are at least as important, if less symbolic. Most of Gaza’s exports and imports go through Israel, using the Karni crossing, instead of traversing the wide Sinai desert between Egyptian ports and Gaza.

Also, Palestinian workers with permits enter Israel through the Erez checkpoint in Gaza’s north. Employment in Israel has long been a vital part of the Gaza economy.

Shutting either or both of the crossings into Israel would cripple the Palestinian economy, already battered by five years of Palestinian-Israeli violence and inherent conditions of overcrowding and deprivation.

Israel is concerned about weapons and terrorists entering Gaza from Egypt, but there are also economic factors.

Israel and the Palestinians have a customs union that prevents flooding Israel with cheap goods. It applies to both Gaza and the West Bank. Israeli officials say if customs supervision is absent at Rafah, they will have no choice but to close the other crossings – and Abbas appeared to be responding to that concern when he said the Gaza-Egypt crossing would reopen only after an agreement is reached.

The border was quiet today but yesterday 2,000 Palestinian police fanned out along the 10-mile) border, closing it. On the other side, 750 Egyptian troops were on patrol.