CAIRO, April 30 (AFP) - Egypt will permanently open the Rafah border crossing to ease the blockade on Gaza, Foreign Minister Nabil al-Arabi said on Friday, sparking Israeli concerns over regional security.
Arabi told Al-Jazeera Egypt would take “important steps to help ease the blockade on Gaza in the few days to come,” according to the Arabic-language satellite channel.
He said Egypt would no longer accept that the Rafah border -- Gaza's only crossing that bypasses Israel -- remain blocked, describing the decision to seal it off as “shameful”.
The announcement came days after Gaza's Islamist Hamas rulers and their secular West Bank rivals Fatah, which controls the Palestinian Authority, agreed to end their rift and form an interim government to prepare for elections.
In talks before the deal, the two sides had discussed reopening the crossing after positioning PA representatives at the border, a condition in a US-brokered 2005 border crossing agreement between Israel and the PA.
Senior Hamas official Mahmud Zahar told AFP it was understood the crossing, which under the 2005 agreement was to be monitored by European Union delegates, would be opened after a unity deal.
“It has always been understood that passage was to open as there was an agreement,” he said. Zahar did not say whether the PA would send representatives to the border, a requisite for the presence of the EU monitors under the 2005 accord.
In Jerusalem, a senior official said Israel was “very concerned” about the implications of the Rafah crossing being open.
Speaking on condition of anonymity, the official said Hamas had already built up a “dangerous military machine” in northern Sinai which could be further strengthened by opening Rafah.
“We are very concerned about the situation in northern Sinai where Hamas has succeeded in building a dangerous military machine, despite Egyptian efforts to prevent that,” he told AFP, without elaborating. |
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