Egypt opens border crossing with Gaza and breaks blockade

[Gromit]

Egypt has opened its border with Gaza after the flotilla attack. Humanitarian aid can now cross into Gaza and alleviate the suffering of its Palestinian citizens.

http://www.jpost.com/...rticle.aspx?id=177146

So the objectives of the attacks have resulted in the exact opposite, and supplies are now able to enter Gaza again. will Israel learn from its mistake this time?

[Ankou]

why was the egyptian border closed in the 1st place ?

[Gromit]

// The Rafah Border Crossing is an international border crossing between Egyptian and Palestinian-controlled Rafah. It was built by the Israeli and Egyptian governments after the 1979 Israel-Egypt Peace Treaty and 1982 Israeli withdrawal from the Sinai Peninsula, and was managed by the Israel Airports Authority until it was evacuated on 11 September 2005 as part of Israel's unilateral disengagement plan.

It has since become the mission of the European Union Border Assistance Mission Rafah (EUBAM) to monitor the crossing.
The Rafah crossing was opened on 25 November 2005 and operated nearly daily until 25 June 2006. Between then and November 2006, it was closed by Israel on 86% of days due to security reasons. It was not opened for the export of goods. In June 2007, it was closed entirely by Egypt after the Hamas takeover of the Gaza Strip.

The EU Ambassador to Israel said that EUBAM monitors could not return to man the crossing because the legal basis for EUBAM - the November 2005 agreement on movement and access - specified that the terminal was to be manned by the Fatah-aligned Force 17, who were no longer there.

On January 23, 2008, masked gunmen demolished the wall, that Hamas-linked militants had apparently weakened in 2007, dividing the Egyptian and Palestinian portions of Rafah, and several hundred thousand Gazans entered Egypt, most of them to buy food and supplies.

On December 27, 2008, Egypt opened the crossing to care for the wounded after the Israeli airstrikes in Gaza. //

[Ankou]

so its a temporary solution and they'll shut it again soon after they get an international pat on the back.

[Gromit]

Ankou

I should imagine they are frightened of a huge influx of refugees into Egypt, and that is why the crossing is not permanent.

[Ankou]

well they seem to allow the smugglers tunnels to continue to operate between gaza and egypt. perhaps, just specualting, the smuggling operation provides some decent income to the egyptians ........ (all underground of course)

[modeller]

Egypt has its own problems with the Muslim Brotherhood who have links with Hammass and therefore needs to control who and what passes through their crossing point.