Feb 2, 2008 12:22 | Updated Feb 3, 2008 14:33
Egypt closes Rafah border
By KHALED ABU TOAMEH, YAAKOV KATZ, AP AND JPOST.COM STAFF

Egyptian troops closed the last breach in Egypt's frontier with the Gaza Strip on Sunday morning, witnesses and Hamas security officials said, bringing to an end a week and a half of free movement for Gazans.

The troops were allowing Gazans and Egyptians who remained on the wrong side of the border to cross back, the witnesses and officials said, but had stopped allowing any new cross-border movement.

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The officials said that while Israel was not part of the talks on the closure of the border, the defense establishment was in favor of the Hamas declaration earlier Saturday that Gaza would receive fuel and electricity from Egypt instead of from Israel.

"This would be great," one defense official said. "We have no interest in continuing to supply them with anything and prefer that they get what they need from Egypt."

Egypt's decision to close the border came after government officials in Cairo held separate talks last week with Hamas and Fatah leaders. The talks ended in failure as both Palestinian movements stuck to their original positions, sources close to the two parties said.

Hamas rejected Fatah's demand to redeploy forces loyal to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas at the Rafah border crossing in accordance with a US-brokered agreement that was reached in 2005.

Hamas also rejected the return of European monitors to the terminal, insisting that the border should be controlled only by Palestinians and Egyptians. However, Muhammad Naser, a member of the Hamas delegation to the Cairo talks, said his movement would agree to the presence of international monitors at the border on condition that they live in the Gaza Strip or Egypt. He noted that the European Union monitors who were stationed at the border crossing until Hamas took over the Strip in June had lived in Israel.

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