For all intents and purposes, Hamas has launched an invasion of Egypt and is now openly trying to keep the borders open. Estimates are that almost half of the population of Gaza is now over the border into Egypt. The Egyptian police appear to be unable to stuff the genie back into the bottle, so to speak.
RAFAH, Gaza Strip (AFP) – Hamas militants on Friday used a bulldozer to open new breaches on the border with Egypt where security forces had tried to retake control and stem a three-day flood of Palestinians seeking food and supplies.
The earthmover opened two new breaches in the frontier a few dozen metres (yards) apart as Egyptian police stood by powerless to intervene, having earlier used electric batons and water cannon in a bid to herd Palestinians back into confinement in Gaza.A security source said an Egyptian border guard had been lightly hurt when he was hit in the foot by a Palestinian bullet and transferred to hospital.
Hundreds of Palestinians, who had been chanting pro-Hamas slogans while waiting to go into Egypt to stock up on goods, seized the opportunity and crossed the border on foot, in donkey carts and by car, defying Egypt's 1300 GMT deadline for everyone to go home.
Police had earlier blocked Gazans from crossing over into Egypt through the largest of the breaches which militants blew in the border wall on Tuesday night in the divided frontier town of Rafah, sparking an exodus of hundreds of thousands.
Egyptian security forces used electric batons to push back those trying to get into Egypt and to herd others back into the Gaza Strip, witnesses said, as Egyptian armoured vehicles arrived with coils of barbed wire in readiness to reseal numerous minor border breaches.
The security forces also barred trucks of goods carrying everything from blankets to motorbikes from crossing the Suez Canal on their way from Cairo to replenish Rafah's depleted stocks, an AFP correspondent reported.
The Egyptians and indeed all the governments in the region, purposely let the situation in the Palestinian territories fester. Now the problem appears to have come to them. Nobody wants the Palestinians and the murderous culture they have developed. Now the governments are going to have to figure out how to deal with the harvest of the crop they sowed. It is beginning to look like the Egyptians are either going to have to use troops to force the Palestinians back or to live with what they helped create.
Poetic justice of a sort.
