RAFAH, Egypt (AFP) — Egypt has brought in extra troops to reinforce its border with Gaza after Hamas threatened to repeat a January breach that saw hundreds of thousands of Palestinians stream across the frontier.
Goods trucks headed for the border were being stopped at the Suez Canal on Thursday in a bid to remove the economic incentive for Palestinians to break out of Gaza and defeat Israel's lockdown of the territory, a security official said.
Egypt, which has been trying to mediate between Israel and the Palestinians over how to legally reopen the Rafah crossing, has sent reinforcements to the area, saying that a repeat breach would be unacceptable.
"Hundreds of central security forces have arrived at their headquarters in El-Arish (northern Sinai) and are ready to be deployed in (the border town of) Rafah," the security official said.
"Reinforcements have come from Cairo and (the canal city of) Ismailiya," the official said, adding that police trucks have been stationed around the mountainous areas in Sinai.
Egypt on Wednesday reinforced its security forces on the border itself after Khalil al-Hayya, a senior member of Hamas, the Islamist movement which controls the Gaza Strip, said that "all options are open to break the siege" by Israel.
"I expect that what will happen next will be greater than what happened before, not only against the Egyptian border, but against all the crossings," Hayya said.
The Egyptian foreign ministry slammed the statements as "unacceptable" and said any attempt to violate the sovereignty of Egypt would be dealt with seriously.
Israel has sealed off Gaza from all but vital goods since Hamas seized power last June, in a bid to halt rocket attacks from the territory and to put pressure on the Islamist-run government.
On Wednesday, deadly gunbattles raged on the Gaza-Israel border.
Hamas has been negotiating with Egypt for weeks in a bid to reopen the Rafah crossing, the only gateway to Gaza that bypasses Israel.
On January 23, Palestinian militants demolished the border barricades between Gaza and Egypt, sending hundreds of thousands of Gazans flooding into Egypt to stock up on supplies.
Egyptian and Hamas forces resealed the frontier on February 4.
Copyright © 2009 AFP. All rights reserved. More »
