GAZA/LONDON (Agencies)
Tens of thousands of Palestinians poured into Egypt from the Gaza Strip on Wednesday through a border wall blown up by militants and stocked up on food and fuel while authorities in Cairo arrested scores of demonstrators chanting against the Israeli blockade on Gaza.
The fall of the Rafah wall punched a new hole in Israeli efforts to keep pressure on the Gaza Strip in the face of an international outcry over shortages in the territory Palestinians call a giant jail.
A border terminal in Rafah, once a main avenue to the outside world for Gazans, has been largely closed since Hamas Islamists opposed to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas's peace efforts with Israel violently took over the Gaza Strip in June.
Egyptian riot police sent to reinforce the border mainly stood aside and let the Palestinians through, witnesses said, a day after they drove back Gazans who stormed the Rafah crossing.
In Cairo, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak said he told the security forces: "Let them come in to eat and buy food." After the Gazans do so, Mubarak said, they can go back "as long as they are not carrying weapons".
Israel, saying it hoped to curb militants' rocket attacks, tightened its Gaza border closure last week, cutting fuel shipments to a main power plant and petrol stations and stopping aid that included food and other humanitarian supplies. |
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Cairo demonstrations Meanwhile Egyptian authorities detained at least 500 people in Cairo on Wednesday who were demonstrating in support of Palestinians in the Gaza strip.
"The protesters, most of whom belong to the opposition Muslim Brotherhood, were detained as they staged the protest in front of the Arab League headquarters" in the centre of the Egyptian capital, a security source said.
The Islamist group, the largest opposition movement in the country, said on its website that 1,000 of its members had been arrested. |
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Shared administration In a televised speech in Gaza City, Hamas leader Ismail Haniya said the group was ready for a dialogue with Abbas's Fatah faction and Egypt on steps to reopen border crossings and share in their administration.
"We do not want to control everything, we are part of the Palestinian people," Haniyeh said. Abbas's Prime Minister, Salam Fayyad, has proposed the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority run border crossings, an offer Israel has so far rebuffed.
Israel resumed fuel supplies to Gaza's main power plant on Tuesday, offering limited respite from the blockade that had plunged much of the territory into darkness.
The European Union and international agencies have called the closure collective punishment on Gaza's 1.5 million people.
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has said Israel has no intention of causing a humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip, but it would deny Palestinians in the territory "luxuries" as long as rocket attacks continued.
The Israeli army says about 250 rockets and mortars have pounded Israel since last week, amid an escalation of violence.
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