Palestinian police fired in the air to disperse stone-throwing youths at the Gaza-Egypt border on Saturday as forces tried to stop the chaotic flow of people across the frontier since Israel withdrew from the Gaza Strip.
President Mahmoud Abbas has vowed to stop the irregular border crossings, which fuelled Israeli worries that arms would be smuggled to Gaza militants following its troop withdrawal after 38 years of occupation.
Thousands of jubilant Gazans have broken through the border, formerly patrolled by Israel and now under Egyptian control, to take advantage of an opportunity unknown for decades.
Many went to see long-missed relatives or shop. Others to smuggle cheap goods from Egypt. Some brought back guns. West Bank Palestinians also ventured into areas previously kept off limits by Israel when on Saturday scores of them roamed the derelict ruins of the former settlement of Homesh in the northern part of the occupied territory, witnesses said.
An Israeli army spokeswoman said troops would not intervene as civilians scavenged the rubble of the destroyed houses, taking pipes, old fences and other scraps in an area which is now freely accessible to the local Palestinian population.
"Now that there is no longer a settlement there, it is just like any other hilltop in the area and there are no restrictions of movement there on the local population," the spokeswoman told Reuters.
The chaos at the Gaza-Egypt border added to a growing sense of lawlessness in the strip, seen as a testing ground for the statehood that Palestinians also want in the occupied West Bank.
Witnesses said Palestinian forces fired bursts of gunfire in the air in at least two places on the border to disperse dozens of youths trying to cross to the Egyptian side.
Four policemen were lightly injured by stones. "Palestinian and Egyptian security forces are allowing only people returning to their homes on both sides," Palestinian Interior Ministry spokesman Tawfiq Abu Khoussa said.
The security source said a total of 2,000 police should be deployed to the border by Sunday. Israel ceded control of the buffer zone on the frontier to Egypt as part of its Gaza withdrawal.
But the 750 Egyptian officers who deployed there did not stop thousands of Palestinians and Egyptians from crossing through holes militants blasted in the barrier.
Palestinian forces worked on Saturday to plug the breaches with concrete blocks. Egyptian forces shored up the other side and blocked the path of Palestinians trying to get in.
Palestinians still managed to get across the Egyptian border and due to their numbers, Egyptian and Palestinian forces subsequently made little effort to stop them.