Israel reopens Gaza-Egypt border crossing

Palestinians cross the Rafah border crossing between the Gaza Strip and Egypt yesterday. Israel reopened the border crossing, where thousands of Palestinians have been stranded in miserable conditions for nearly three weeks, Palestinian sources said. PHOTO: AFP

The first busload of Palestinians crossed into Gaza early Friday, Palestinians said. The army confirmed the crossing was open.

Israel closed the border on July 18, saying it had intelligence that Palestinian militants had dug a tunnel under the crossing or a nearby Israeli outpost and were planning to blow it up.

Some 1,500 Palestinians trying to get home through Egypt were stranded in the desert facing severe hardships, including food shortages. Egypt warned this week of a humanitarian crisis.

Early Friday, hundreds of Palestinians arrived from all over the Gaza Strip to welcome their relatives. Peeping through a chain-link fence, they tried to find family members passing through security and passport checks on the Israeli side of the border.

During the three-week shutdown, Israel opened another crossing nearby, but Palestinians refused to use it because they would have been required to pass through Israel to get home.

Under terms of interim peace accords, Israel controls the crossings between the Palestinian territories and neighboring countries.

AFP adds: Israel will scale back its controversial construction of new houses in a key West Bank settlement following US pressure, public television said late Thursday.

The government has decided to cut about a quarter of the 600 new homes in Maale Adumin it had planned for the largest of the West Bank settlements, it said.

The mayor of the settlement of some 28,000 inhabitants, Benny Kachriel, told television "the construction of this lot of 600 houses was already approved during the era of Ehud Barak's Labour government" in 1999.

"We already sold 465 of these house, and the freeze announced Thursday night concerns the rest of these house," he said.

The announcement came after a meeting between top White House envoy Elliott Abrams, the deputy to National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in which the US envoy was expected to criticize the construction plans, as well as a blueprint for a new West Bank settlement.

Abrams also met with Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom, who said afterward: "Israel will respect all of its commitments under the roadmap," referring to the Middle East peace plan endorsed by both the Palestinians and Israel last year.

Under the plan, Israel is required to freeze all settlement activity in the occupied territories. About 100 settlements have sprung up since Sharon took office in 2000.