Egypt condemned Israel's decision to kick off its ground operation in the Gaza Strip, warning the Jewish state about enlarging the scope of the conflict and ordering its forces to penetrate deeper into the Strip. The Egyptian Presidency issued a statement yesterday calling on the UN Security Council and the International Quartet to quickly take their responsibilities without losing time. The statement also called on the Security Council to put the blame on Israel as an occupation force and face the humanitarian repercussions on the Palestinians in Gaza. Egypt's foreign ministry summoned yesterday the ambassadors of the five permanent members of the Security Council (US, China, Russia, Britain and France) to express Egypt's indignation at the Council's failure to adopt a binding resolution to stop Israel's aggression on the Gaza Strip. Speaking to the press yesterday, Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit said the Security Council's silence and failure to adopt such kind of resolution since the beginning of the aggression has been taken by Israel as a green light to expand its operations. Aboul Gheit also defined this failure as a sort of uncovered maneuver to give more time to Israel to press ahead with its aggression. Arab League Secretary General Amr Moussa strongly rejected European countries' assertion that Israel is defending itself. According to him, one cannot say, as Israel affirms, that 40% of Gazans are civilians and the rest are military elements, and yet describe this operation as defensive. Meanwhile, the Egyptian authorities closed the Rafah border crossing yesterday, preventing aid from going into the Gaza Strip and Palestinian wounded from being taken to Egypt. This came as Israel kept on bombarding the border zone and all employees there fled for fear of being hit by Israeli fire. In the meantime, some shipments (3 from Egypt and 9 from Russia) containing food and blankets were allowed into the Palestinian Territories across al-Awja trade border crossing between Israel and Egypt. Cairo proposed to set up a safe corridor inside the Gaza Strip to let food and medicines reach the Gazans until the military operations come to a halt, given the fragile humanitarian situation there. The official spokesman of the Egyptian foreign ministry, Hissam Zaki, said the Egyptian proposal aims to spare Palestinian civilians as much grief as possible, especially when it comes to providing food. Tens of thousands of Egyptians, mostly from the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) group, staged demonstrations nationwide yesterday to protest against Israeli forces' ground offensive on the Gaza Strip. They described the Arab stance as shameful and called on people to fast on Monday and Tuesday. Meanwhile, hundreds of people donated their blood to Gaza victims.
