ISRAEL/EGYPT: Dozens of Palestinians, stranded for weeks in Egypt since Hamas took over Gaza, cross an Egyptian-Israeli border point en route Gaza

Israel allowed the first 100 Palestinians stranded for weeks in Egypt to return to the Gaza Strip on Sunday (July 29) under a deal rejected by Hamas Islamists. Palestinian officials estimate that some 6,000 Palestinians have been waiting on the Egyptian side of the border since Hamas seized control of the Gaza Strip from forces loyal to President Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah faction on June 14. The first 100 Palestinians crossed into Israel from the Egyptian Sinai and were due to be transported through Israeli territory to a key border crossing with Gaza. Dozens of men, women and children, marched from the Egyptian side of the border into Israel where they loaded their luggage and boarded on buses which drove them to Erez border crossing in northern Gaza. Hamas rejected the deal, insisting that Israel allow the thousands of Palestinians stranded in Egypt to use the Rafah border crossing between Gaza and Egypt. Rafah has been closed since June 9, when European Union monitors pulled out of the crossing. Since then, the fate of Rafah has been caught up in the power struggle between Hamas and Abbas, who dismissed a unity cabinet led by the Islamists and appointed Salam Fayyad as prime minister of a new government in the occupied West Bank. Many Palestinians see Rafah, Gaza's only direct crossing to the outside world that does not go through Israel, as a symbol of sovereignty.

ITN Source | July 29, 2007

Tags:. .women. .source. .children. .government. .thousands