Egypt warns Gaza infiltrators

CAIRO—Egypt said on Thursday it would no longer tolerate Palestinians infiltrating the country from the Gaza Strip, and threatened to break the legs of anyone crossing the Rafah border illegally.
“Anyone who breaches the border will have their legs broken,” Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Abul Gheit was quoted as saying by the official MENA news agency on public television overnight.
Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians living in the impoverished Gaza Strip, subjected to a punishing Israeli blockade, crossed freely into Egypt after Islamist militants from Hamas blew apart border barriers late last month. Abul Gheit said Egypt had allowed the Palestinians to flood across the border for humanitarian reasons only.
He blamed Israel for the situation in the Gaza Strip, accusing the Jewish state of imposing collective punishment on a territory that is home to 1.5 million Palestinians in response to rocket attacks by militants. Abul Gheit also reproached Hamas for firing rockets into Israel, describing the standoff as a “laughable caricature.”
The minister said some rockets misfire and hit the Gaza Strip itself, wounding Palestinians and merely providing Israel with a pretext to attack. Egyptian and Hamas forces, which seized armed control of the Gaza Strip in mid-June, resealed the Rafah border last week.
It was the first time Hamas had claimed an attack since August 2004. Twelve Gaza militants have been killed since Monday, all but one Hamas, and the group has vowed revenge, retaliating with rocket and mortar fire. Israel has been on alert since Monday’s bombing — the first suicide attack in the Jewish state since January last year — in the southern desert town of Dimona that killed one woman and wounded nearly a dozen other people.
The attack came after a nearly two-week breach of the Gaza-Egypt border, which raised fears in Israel that Gaza militants could have entered the Jewish state. It was resealed by Egyptian and Hamas forces on Sunday. Israel has increasingly tightened restrictions on Gaza since the start of the second Palestinian uprising in 2000, notably in June 2006 after militants seized a soldier and a year later when Hamas took control.
In October, Israel began reducing fuel supplies to Gaza, sparking an outcry by rights groups which warned of dire consequences for hospitals and other basic infrastructure on which Gaza’s 1.5 million inhabitants rely. Aids groups say Israel is expected to further reduce the amount of electricity it supplies to Gaza, over the next two weeks shaving 1.5 megawatts off the 120 megawatts it currently provides. He blamed Israel for the situation in the Gaza Strip, accusing the Jewish state of imposing collective punishment on a territory that is home to 1.5 million Palestinians in response to rocket attacks by militants. Abul Gheit also reproached Hamas for firing rockets into Israel, describing the standoff as a “laughable caricature.”
New York-based Human Rights Watch accused Israel of “collective punishment” over the supply cuts in its campaign to halt the near-daily rocket attacks launched by Palestinian militants at southern Israel. “Israel views restricting fuel and electricity to Gaza as a way to pressure Palestinian armed groups to stop their rocket and suicide attacks,” HRW’s Middle East director Joe Stork said in a statement. Abul Gheit said Egypt had allowed the Palestinians to flood across the border for humanitarian reasons only.
“But the cuts are seriously affecting civilians who have nothing to do with these armed groups, and that violates a fundamental principle of the laws of war”.—Agencies