RAFAH, Gaza Strip –Tens of thousands of Gazans on foot and riding donkey carts poured into Egypt on Wednesday, after gunmen used land mines to blast down parts of a 12-kilometer (seven-mile) barrier between the two territories _ effectively ending Israel’s blockade of Gaza imposed a week ago.
Jubilant Gazans flooded the border town of Rafah in Egypt, buying cigarettes, plastic bottles of fuel, and other goods that have become scarce because of months of severe restrictions on movement in and out of Gaza.
Walking unhindered over toppled metal plates that once made up the border wall, they carried goats, chickens and crates of Coke. Some brought back televisions and car tires, and one man bought a motorcycle. Vendors sold soft drinks and baked goods to the crowds.
After news of the border breach spreads, people across the Gaza Strip pushed into buses and piled into rickety pickup trucks heading for Egypt and a rare chance to escape Gaza’s isolation.
”Freedom is good. We need no border after today,” said unemployed Mohammed Abu Ghazal, 29.
The collapse of the border, although likely temporary, is a boon to Hamas. It briefly eases the international blockade of Gaza and gives the Islamic militants possible leverage in demanding new border arrangements.
In the short term, it also eases pressure on Egypt and moderate Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to take decisive steps to ease the suffering of Gazans. At the same time, it would likely raise tensions between Egypt and Israel, which fears militants and weapons will flood Gaza in growing numbers.
Palestinians have broken through the Egyptian border several times since Israel pulled out of Gaza in 2005, and Egypt was able to restore the boundary within a day or so, with barbed wire. None of the previous breaches approached the scale of Wednesday’s destruction, which demolished two-thirds of the wall.
Wednesday’s events began before dawn when the border wall, erected in 2001 by Israel when it still controlled Gaza, was destroyed by masked gunmen, using 17 explosive charges.
Hamas did not take responsibility for the blasts, but it seemed unlikely a systematic operation of this type cold have been undertaken without its approval, if not active involvement. Hamas police quickly took control, channeling the crowds through two sections of the frontier.
The supreme Hamas leader, Khaled Mashaal, said his group is willing to work with Egypt and Hamas’ rival, moderate Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, to work out a shared border arrangement. Gaza has been virtually sealed since Hamas seized control by force in June, and any easing of restrictions could stabilize Hamas’ rule.
Israel expressed concern that militants and weapons might be entering Gaza amid the chaos, and said responsibility for restoring order lay with Egypt, whose guards along the border took no action.
Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak said he told his border officials to let the Palestinians cross because they were ”starving” under the Israeli blockade. No starvation has been reported in Gaza, but acute shortages have raised the specter of a humanitarian emergency.
”I told them to let them come in and eat and buy food and then return them later as long as they were not carrying weapons,” Mubarak said. His comment suggested Egypt would eventually restore its control over the border.
Egypt finds itself in a bind over how to respond. Egypt has largely kept its border with Gaza closed since the Hamas takeover amid concerns of a spillover of Hamas-style militancy into Egypt. But Egypt’s government is also under popular pressure at home to help the impoverished Gazans.
Within hours after Wednesday’s border breach, shops on the Egyptian side of the divided border town of Rafah –it has an Egyptian and a Gaza segment, with the wall running through it –had run out of most of their wares.
Ibrahim Abu Taha, 45, a father of seven, was in the Egyptian section of Rafah with his two brothers and 700 shekels ($185, euro128) in his pocket. ”We want to buy food, we want to buy rice and sugar, milk and wheat and some cheese,” Abu Taha said, adding that the same basic foods in Gaza would cost three times as much.
Moussa Zuroub, a 28-year-old Palestinian, carried his young daughter Aseel on his shoulders, trudging through the muddy streets of Egyptian Rafah. ”I’m coming just to break that ice _ that all my life, I’d never left Gaza before,” Zuroub said.
In an absurd twist, the Gazans’ hungry descent on Rafah forced some Egyptians to look for food in Gaza.
”I need to buy bread for my children,” said Ashraf el-Sayyid, 32, an Egyptian who rode his motorbike into Gaza to shop. ”The Palestinians left us with nothing. It’s true, they are dear to us, but today they were like locusts.”
The opening of the border had immediate effects on Gaza’s economy. Cigarette prices, which have skyrocketed during the months of closure, had already dropped by nearly two-thirds by Wednesday afternoon. The dollar exchange rate was up, moneychangers said, because people needed the currency to buy in Egypt, and taxis were scarce across Gaza because drivers were busy ferrying people over the border.
Israel found itself in a difficult situation, worried about an influx of militants and arms but unwilling to be seen as criticizing Egypt too strongly for fear of alienating an important Arab country.
”Israel has no forces in Gaza or Egypt, and the Egyptians control the border, and therefore it is the responsibility of Egypt to ensure that the border operates properly according to the signed agreements. We expect the Egyptians to solve the problem,” said Arye Mekel, a spokesman for Israel’s Foreign Ministry.
”Obviously we are worried about the situation. It could potentially allow anybody to enter,” Mekel said.
But there was some indication that the new situation along the Gaza-Egypt border could suit Israel, which would prefer to have responsibility for the seething coastal territory moved elsewhere. ”Now the border is open they can get supplies from Egypt and don’t have to be dependent on us,” a senior Israeli government official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because the view is not official Israeli policy.
Despite the Israeli concerns about a weapons influx, a market stall in Egyptian Rafah selling pistols and ammunition clips for Kalashnikov assault rifles had no customers Wednesday.
An off-duty Hamas policeman, who gave only his first name, Abdel Rahman, said there was no need to buy weapons from Egypt. ”You can buy weapons in Gaza, guns and RPGs,” he said, adding that they were easier to find than cancer medicine or Coke. Weapons generally enter Gaza through smuggling tunnels under the Gaza-Egypt border.
The chaotic scenes came almost a week after Israel imposed a tight closure on Gaza, backed by Egypt, in response to a spike in Gaza rocket attacks on Israeli border towns.
On Tuesday, Israel eased the closure slightly, transferring fuel to restart Gaza’s only power plant, and also sent in some cooking gas, food and medicine. Israel has pledged to continue limited shipments because of concerns about a possible humanitarian crisis, but Israeli defense officials said Wednesday there would be no new shipments for the time being. Gazans are facing critical shortages of electricity, fuel and other supplies.
”We don’t want a humanitarian crisis, but the Hamas government who is responsible for the launching of rockets into Israel had to be weakened by all means,” Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak sai on a visit to Paris.
International reaction to the dramatic events was muted.
U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said the U.S. wants to see stability in the region, but that ”most importantly both the security concerns of Israel and the humanitarian concerns of Gazans be met.”
The Israeli blockade of Gaza is aimed at halting intense rocket fire by Gaza militants that has sent residents in Israeli border communities scrambling for shelter several times a day.
The rockets have traumatized many area residents and killed 12 Israelis in six years. Rocket fire has persisted despite the closure, though no fire was reported Wednesday.
Hamas said the border breach should not come as a surprise.
”Blowing up the border wall with Egypt is a reflection of the … catastrophic situation which the Palestinian people in Gaza are living through due to the blockade.”
Over the past few days, pictures of blacked-out Gaza City, children marching mournfully with candles and people lining up at closed bakeries evoked urgent appeals from governments, aid agencies and the U.N. for an end to the closure, though Israel maintained all along that Hamas created an artificial crisis.
