RAFAH: Egypt and Israel reopened the Rafah border crossing on Tuesday for the first time in three weeks, triggering a rush to the border by thousands of Palestinians who had been waiting in Egypt. About 300 Palestinians entered the Gaza Strip in the first hour of the crossing s opening. Another 5,000 Palestinians were waiting on the Egyptian side to go back to Gaza. The crossing would be open for only one day, Palestinian official Hany Jabour told The Associated Press at the crossing. He said Israel had imposed the time limit on the opening. In Jerusalem, the Israeli Defense Ministry said a decision would be taken Tuesday evening on whether to keep the border open indefinitely. A military spokesman told the Associated Press that the European monitors at Rafah crossing would assess whether the border could remain open. I will never come to Egypt again because of the pain and suffering I have endured with my wife, said Aboul Khair, 50, a barber from Khan Younis in the Strip, who had been waiting for three weeks to return with his wife. A Palestinian student, Heba Al-Qaysi, 21, said she had run out of money and had been reduced to sleeping under the stars because of the prolonged closure. I came to Egypt to renew my visa for Saudi Arabia, she said as she waited to cross Tuesday. I won t ever come back to Egypt after the humiliation we suffered. News of the opening spread fast on the Egyptian side and the road between Rafah and El-Arish, the biggest town in northern Sinai, was quickly filled with cars and minibuses carrying Palestinians toward the border. Jabour said that on the Gaza side there were lots of empty buses waiting to take the Palestinians to various places in the Strip. The crossing was closed on June 25 after Palestinian militants from Gaza crossed into Israel and kidnapped an Israeli soldier from a military outpost. But by then there was already a backlog of Palestinians waiting to cross from Egypt as the border had been open only intermittently for the previous week because the Israelis had warned the European monitors at the crossing of a high security risk. Last Friday, the pressure to cross became so intense that Palestinian militants on the Gazan side forced open a gate at Rafah crossing, enabling about 600 Palestinians to return from Egypt before security officials managed to reseal the border. Rafah crossing is the Strip s only gate to the outside world that does not pass through Israel. The border reopened last November, two months after Israel withdrew from the Gaza Strip following a 38-year occupation, under an Israeli-Palestinian agreement brokered by the United States and allowing for EU monitors. Thousands of Palestinians live in northern Sinai and have relatives in the Gaza Strip. Agencies
