Hundreds of pro-Hamas demonstrators gathered on Sunday at the Rafah crossing in the Gaza Strip to demand that Egypt open its border to relieve a months-old Israeli siege. Around 600 demonstrators waving green flags deployed in front of the crossing under the watchful eyes of Egyptian security forces on the other side, an AFP photographer said.
Hamas-run security forces prevented anyone from approaching the crossing itself-which is the only Gaza frontier post that bypasses Israel. "People of Palestine, the Arab world, and the Islamic world, do not leave Gaza to die!" Ahmed Baher, a senior Hamas leader and the acting head of the Palestinian parliament, said in a speech at the crossing.
Around 700 policemen, including anti-riot forces, were mobilised on the Egyptian side of the border "to prevent any violation after Hamas asked its supporters to protest at the terminal," an Egyptian security official said. The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that 450 policemen were already on the ground while 250 others were in police cars waiting for orders to deploy.
"The reinforcements were given orders to maintain calm and not respond to the provocations from the Palestinian protesters," the official told AFP in the Egyptian border town of El-Arish. Israel has sealed off the Gaza Strip since Hamas seized power in the impoverished territory in June 2007 following deadly clashes with supporters of Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas.
Israel has allowed only limited humanitarian goods into Gaza to isolate Hamas, which is pledged to the destruction of the Jewish state. In January Palestinian militants blew up large sections of the border fence, sending hundreds of thousands of Gazans pouring into Egypt to stock up on basic goods before Egyptian and Hamas resealed the border after nearly two weeks.
In June, an Egyptian-brokered truce brought a virtual halt to fighting between Israeli troops and Palestinian militants and near-daily rocket attacks launched from Gaza on southern Israel. Hamas had said the truce would lead to the lifting of the Israeli siege, which Israel has in turn linked to progress on the release of Gilad Shalit, a soldier captured in a bloody cross-border raid by Gaza militants in June 2006.
Hamas has offered to exchange Shalit for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners, including several who were implicated in deadly attacks on Israelis, but so far Israel has refused.