CAIRO: The Rafah border crossing between Egypt and Gaza will be closed Tuesday on the occasion of Police Day, a day where strikes are expected to take place around the country.
Activists in Egypt have called for a day of national anger and strikes on Jan. 25, Police Day, in all of Egypt against what they have described as the oppressive tendencies of the regime and specifically the Ministry of Interior. Jan. 25 is also a public holiday.
The border crossing is expected to be reopened again on Wednesday, according to a statement by the crossings and border administration in the Hamas government in Gaza, the Chinese People’s Daily reported.
Shut down in the wake of the Hamas takeover of the Gaza Strip in 2007, and only opened intermittently since, Egypt had decided to open the Rafah crossing continuously after an Israeli raid on an aid flotilla intended for Gaza in June 2010 in which nine people were killed.
The closure of the crossing also comes after a statement by Interior Minister Habib El-Adly in which he accused a Palestinian armed group, the Army of Islam, as being responsible for the New Year’s bombing of a church in Alexandria, which killed 23 people, a claim the group then denied.
The Rafah crossing is the only gateway out of Gaza that is not under direct Israeli control. Egypt is building an underground fence along the 13 km border it has with Gaza ostensibly to curtail the smuggling that goes on in the tunnels dug beneath the border.
Meanwhile a US Embassy Cable obtained by Wikileaks regarding the Rafah crossing was published by the Guardian newspaper last Sunday. Dated in 2006 before Hamas clashed with Fatah but was the newly appointed government, it is a sit-down with head of the Israeli Security Agency (known as Shabak) Yuval Diskin.
In the cable Diskin reportedly says that he had concerns over keeping the crossing open with the Hamas government in charge as his agency possessed intelligence that claimed people were being sent to Iran and Lebanon to “increase Hamas capabilities.”
Asked about “Egypt’s ability to influence matters in Gaza, Diskin replied that the Egyptians have ties across the Palestinian spectrum within Gaza, but no influence,” the cable read.
It also quoted him as saying; “The most important thing they [Egypt] can do is stop the smuggling which takes place between their borders with both Gaza and Israel.”
