EGYPT opened its border with the Gaza Strip on Tuesday, letting Palestinians and aid cross until further notice amid a storm of international criticism of Israel's siege of the enclave after its deadly raid of an international aid flotilla. "President Hosni Mubarak ordered the opening of the Rafah border crossing, the only way bypassing Israel, to allow humanitarian aid into the Israeli-blockaded Gaza Strip," Mourad Muwafi, the Governor of Northern Sinai, said on Tuesday. Muwafi added that the opening of the crossing was an effort to "alleviate the suffering of our Palestinian brothers after the Israeli attack" on the flotilla. "The border will remain open for an unlimited time," he said, letting Palestinians enter and leave Egypt. A permanent opening of the crossing, which lies above a stretch of desert frontier riddled by hundreds of smuggling tunnels, could help improve the worse humanitarian circumstances in the strip. "Hard materials" – apparently including concrete and steel, which Gazans want to repair damage from last year's Israeli offensive – would have to go via Israel, an Egyptian source said. Israel has made clear since it halted a Turkish-backed aid convoy at sea on Monday that it will not ease its embargo. The Interior Ministry, run by Hamas since it seized control of the Gaza Strip from Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in June 2007, said in a statement: "Rafah crossing is open every day from 9am (06:00 GMT) to 7pm". Meanwhile, two Egyptian MPs who were more than 700 activists on board Turkish Ship Avi Maramara heading to Gaza, when the Israeli commandos raided the flotilla killing 19, returned home yesterday after contacts were made to secure their return from Israel. "It was hell in the sea. I saw Israeli soldiers killing activists with more than one shot and walking on their bodies," said MP Hazem Farouq, a member of the banned Muslim Brotherhood. Farouq and another MP, Mohamed el- Beltagui, were handed to the Egyptian Embassy in Tel Aviv late on Monday after Egypt's Foreign Ministers summoned Israeli ambassador in Cairo, which have a peace treaty with the Jewish state since 1979. "The Israelis left some of the injured without any treatment until they died in front of them," Farouq said. He added that he and his colleague were robbed of all their belongings and LE18,000 ($3,500). The raid provoked the most scathing international condemnation of Israel since its war against the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip a year and a half ago and appeared likely to increase pressure to end its blockade that has deepened the poverty of the 1.5 million Palestinians living in the enclave. The UN Security Council condemned the "acts" that resulted in the deaths and called for an impartial investigation. Greta Berlin of the Free Gaza Movement, which organised the flotilla, said another cargo boat was off the coast of Italy en route to Gaza. Asecond boat carrying about three dozen passengers is expected to join it, Berlin said. She said the two boats would arrive in the region late this week or early next week. "This initiative is not going to stop," she said from the group's base in Cyprus. "We think eventually Israel will get some kind of common sense. They're going to have to stop the blockade of Gaza, and one of the ways to do this is for us to continue to send the boats." Protests have erupted in many Muslim countries including yesterda, which unofficially supported the flotilla, Indonesia and Malaysia, where a Palestinian man slashed himself outside the American Embassy. Turkey accused the Jewish state yesterday of a "bloody massacre" against the aid flotilla of six ships carrying humanitarian goods bound for blockaded Gaza.
