AL-ARISH: Egypt has sent 400 police to bolster security at its Rafah border terminal with the Gaza Strip ahead of a planned Palestinian protest on Thursday, a security official said.
The officers were deployed around the crossing point – the sole Gaza frontier post that bypasses Israel – to prevent a new violation of the crossing if the demonstration degenerated, the official told AFP.
The crossing was closed on July 2 after thousands of Palestinians stormed the border in a bid to flee the impoverished territory which has been under a crippling Israeli blockade since Hamas seized power more than a year ago.
In the ensuing clashes, Egyptian security forces drove the crowd back from the border with water cannon as Palestinians hurled rocks before being dispersed by baton-wielding Hamas security men.
In January and February after Hamas destroyed parts of the border barrier, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians flooded into Egypt in search for vital supplies denied them by the Israeli blockade.
The Rafah crossing has rarely been opened since Hamas seized power in June 2007 after routing forces loyal to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.
Hamas has repeatedly demanded the crossing be reopened and operated by Egyptian and Palestinian officials, while Israel has said it should be governed by a 2005 agreement that provided for international and Israeli monitoring.
Also on Thursday, another security official said a weapons cache probably destined for the Gaza Strip was found in the Sinai Peninsula. The haul, which included a small amount of TNT, had been prepared for delivery, he added.
Both Israel and the United States accuse Egypt of not doing enough to prevent the smuggling of weapons into the Gaza Strip, but Cairo rejects this and says it regularly uncovers cross-border tunnels used by smugglers.
In the Egypt-mediated negotiations that led to the June 19 Gaza truce between the Jewish state and the Islamist Hamas, Israel demanded more vigorous Egyptian action against those trafficking in military contraband. -AFP
