At the Rafah crossing point, Dina Ezzat stands witness to a nightmare caused by Israel "I still cannot benefit from this temporary and one-sided opening of the Rafah crossing. I still cannot get through to see my mother and sisters whom I have not seen for two years. I am still stranded in Al-Arish," said Samir, a 42-year-old Palestinian who has been in Egypt awaiting entry in Gaza for 45 days. Samir was speaking hours after the Rafah crossing which links Gaza and Egypt was declared temporarily open on Saturday morning. Residing in Bahrain and on a journey of close to three decades that started when he "had to leave Gaza in search of a living," Samir, like hundreds of Palestinians in Al-Arish, arrived in Egypt weeks ago through the Rafah crossing which is practically the only access between Gaza and the outside world. And like thousands of Palestinians who have been stranded across Egypt for weeks, Samir, now counting the last few days of his holiday, is praying for a few days of "a confirmed two-way operation of the border" so that he can cross "if only for a few hours" to hug his mother and go back. "Nobody can imagine the torture one has to go through. Only a Palestinian would know the cruelty of having to be here in Al-Arish, only a few kilometres from my family and to be unable to cross," Samir said. He added that the fact of the matter is that he cannot have a one-way crossing because if he was to get stranded on the other side it would be a financial disaster. "If I entered Gaza and failed to exit early enough to go back to Bahrain then I would lose my job which is the only source of income not just for myself and my family but also for my extended family in Gaza that has been rendered jobless due to the economic closure imposed by Israel." Before this month comes to an end, if the border crossing does not open, Samir will have to pack up the gifts he has for his mother, sisters, nephews and nieces and head back to Bahrain "with a broken heart". The Saturday opening of the Rafah crossing, however, was a pleasant albeit short-lived surprise to the thousands of Palestinians stranded on the Gaza side. Of those, hundreds had entered Gaza earlier in the summer and were waiting desperately to exit so they could return to their jobs and schools in the many Arab countries of residence for Palestinians living in the Diaspora. However, since the opening was limited to a few hours, only a few hundred of the many thousands managed to get through. "My wife and children were not among them," commented Anwar, another stranded Palestinian. In Rafah, Anwar, a 47-year-old who lives and works in the United Arab Emirates, had been waiting for members of his family to leave Gaza for weeks and was losing hope that they would make it. Anwar cannot enter Gaza since he is a Palestinian who holds only an Egyptian laissez- passer. His family members hold Palestinian passports and were able to enter Gaza only days before the crossing. On 25 June Israel closed the crossing to avenge the kidnapping of an Israeli soldier by Palestinian freedom fighters. Despite appeals made by many human rights bodies and organisations and despite many diplomatic attempts, including Egyptian, Israel has allowed only limited hours of opening during these two months. The result has been endless stories like those of Samir and Anwar. There were more dramatic humanitarian accounts of people dying on the borders, women going through labour in the open without being accorded basic medical attendance, kidney failure patients denied proper access to dialysis and during the early weeks of July riots by Palestinians stranded on the Egyptian side of the border. The Egyptian Red Cross has attempted to extend help but the problems have been difficult to solve. Following a limited opening of the border on the third week of July to allow for several hundred Palestinians to cross from Egypt into Gaza, Egyptian authorities started preventing Palestinians from grouping around the crossing terminal. Most Palestinian men aged between 18 and 40, sources tell Al-Ahram Weekly, have been kept in two police-controlled spots in Rafah and Al-Arish in difficult conditions. "I tried to go to Al-Arish several times to be near the border so that once the crossing is declared open I can cross," said Zeyad, a 45-year- old Palestinian who lives in the United Arab Emirates. Zeyad was stopped, he said, at Al-Arish security checkpoint. "Just as I was entering Al-Arish after a long drive from Alexandria I was not allowed in. Police officers told me I had to go back to Alexandria." Zeyad's plight is not unique. And his problem is less disturbing than that of Amer who has been sleeping on the ground of the entrance of the house of an Egyptian resident in Rafah for weeks with his brother and sons after having missed getting into Gaza during the third week of July. "I was on the bus and we were only a few minutes from the crossing but then we were notified that the border had to close. I came back to this house where I have been residing for weeks. I am living here in the open-air and my wife is sleeping inside the house with the women of our host." It is very humiliating for Amer to allow his wife to sleep indoors under the same roof with strange men while he sleeps outside. "But I have no choice." Amer represents the vast majority of homeless and stranded Palestinians. Only those Palestinians with economic resources have been able to rent an apartment or stay in hotels. Of those who have limited financial means some were lucky enough to have relatives to take them in but many others were not so fortunate. Officials estimate there are between 2,000 to 3,000 Palestinians stranded in Egypt awaiting either entry into Gaza or a flight back to their Diaspora residence . "What would I have done had it not been for this kind man who has taken me in?" Amer asked. Like many Palestinians who reside in Gaza, Amer is impatiently waiting to return home. He is still hoping that somehow "Egypt will persuade the Israelis to open the borders to let people go." Official Egyptian sources say they have been in continuous contact with their Israeli counterparts to try and regulate the crossing crisis but with little success. The Rafah crossing is essentially operated in accordance with a deal reached between the Palestinian Authority and Israel under the auspices of US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and European Union Foreign Policy and Higher Security Representative Javier Solana on 15 November 2005 following Israel's withdrawal from Gaza. According to the deal, which came into effect after the borders had been installed with sufficient security checks and the EU had sent monitors to operate the crossing, "the passages will operate continuously" and that it is the PA and Egypt that will decide the operation. However, despite the legal fact that the two- document deal put the Palestinians in control of the entry and exit of people and goods, from the early hours of the day until sunset, effectively it is Israel that controls the situation on the ground. Egyptian security sources complain about what they qualify as deliberate Israeli intransigence. In the words of one source who spoke to the Weekly on condition of anonymity, "The Israeli authorities exercise unfair pressure on the European monitors to get them to close the borders, and if they fail, they use phony security threats to intimidate the monitors." Egyptian authorities have expressed their readiness to work round the clock to bring an end to the dilemma of thousands of Palestinians who visit the border crossing every day in the hope they will find it open. "Every day I follow the news and I call up people to inquire if they had heard of a tentative date. Sometimes I feel hopeful and walk to the crossing but only to walk back again," said Ammar, a 48-year-old Palestinian. "I know why they are doing this. They want to force us to pass through the Kerem Salem border so they can arrest us all," he added. Kerem Salem (Kerem Shalom in Hebrew) is the border crossing between Egypt and Israel (Palestinian territories annexed in 1948 as referred to by residents of the border town of Rafah). Israel had indeed proposed to the Palestinian Authority that it allow returnees from Egypt into Gaza through the crossing. Aware of the intentions behind the proposal, the Palestinian side turned it down. Last week, during a special session by the Palestinian Legislative Council on the Rafah border crossing, members of the Fatah movement and rival Hamas agreed that the crossing accords need to be revisited. Given that it is an interim one-year deal, Palestinian legislators are hopeful they can negotiate a better deal that caters more to the interest of the Palestinian people. This is not a hope that Palestinians stranded at the border crossing seem willing to share. For them, their trauma at the Rafah crossing is not just about the unending Diaspora and humiliation they have to go through due to the Israeli occupation of their land and the inability of the international community, the Arab world included, to get them a Palestinian state on the territories annexed by Israel in 1967. For those Palestinians the almost two-months crisis is in fact about the balance of power that must be shifted. "We were foolish to have believed at any point that the Israelis would give us a state through negotiations. Abu Ammar (former Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat) was wrong to have ever believed this," Samir said in firm tones. "Why should Israel want to give us anything. We are too weak. The Arabs do not care much and the rest of the world could not care less," he added. For Samir and almost every other Palestinian interviewed by the Weekly in Rafah and Al-Arish, only through power will Palestinians be able to recapture their land and build their state even if on just part of the 1967 borders. "Egypt retook Sinai after the 1973 War which got Israel to negotiate. The same applies to Lebanon that threw Israel out with its resistance," Samir said. Jordan, he added, "is a different story" -- alluding to the exceptionally good ties between former King Hussein of Jordan and Israel's political leaderships. "Now we have Hamas. It is Hamas and nobody else that will get us a state and it is Hamas that can make things better for us," Samir said. The political and psychological impact of the Israeli closure of the Rafah border crossing goes way beyond favouring the concept of resistance -- that Israel and the US call terrorism -- to that of negotiations. Indeed, it erodes at the little faith that many Egyptians have in their almost three- decade-old peace treaty with Israel. "Listen. I have been living in Rafah for so long. I remember the 1948 War and I can tell you that from then until the 1973 War, the Israelis have shown no interest in peace. They only understand one language: power," said Salman Abu Garad of Rafah. For Salman, 70, and his 30-year-old son Tawfik, the Israelis have usurped Arab rights for decades and no peace deal has put an end to this. "We have a peace deal with them but still they steal the waters from our water-wheels. They keep pumping it out from their side until the water-wheels on our side have become salty. They do not respect peace deals," said Tawfik. Having been a witness to the plight of stranded Palestinians for two months, the Abu Garads are convinced that this will not be the last time Israel finds a way to antagonise Palestinians. "I can tell you they will always find a way and they will always find an excuse to close the borders or to do something else. They will always want to humiliate Palestinians and all Arabs," said Salman. He added, "The sooner we accept this fact the better because if we keep ignoring it we will be further endangered by Israeli greed. The closure of the crossing is only one sign of the problem." The closing of the Rafah border crossing, Egyptian officials say, is likely to continue for a while longer despite expected temporary openings once in a while. Egyptian officials who spoke to the Weekly said they had very little faith in promises made by Israel to once and for all regulate the problem that has caused Cairo a serious political and security headache. Speaking on Saturday while the crossing was open, Palestinian and European officials predicted a possible one-way operation for a few days that could evolve into a two-way operation for a few more days if security is stable from the Israeli point of view. For their part, Egyptian officials sounded convinced that a settlement to the kidnapped Israeli soldier could put an end to the irregularities of the crossings operation. And on Sunday, as Egyptian security became increasingly concerned that desperate Palestinians, especially on the Gaza side, might forcibly enter Rafah as some did last month, security measures were stepped up at the border crossing.
