77°
“We had no warning about this, suddenly they closed the crossing,” said Ashraf Arraf, a 22-year-old Palestinian from Gaza who had traveled to Egypt for medical treatment last month. “I want to be with my family. This is the most important time to be together as a family. It is like telling a Christian family they can’t be together for Christmas.”
An Egyptian military official reached in Al Arish, a border town near Rafah, said Palestinian militants were behind many of the attacks on Egyptian military posts and police checkpoints.
“There are dangerous terrorists from Gaza attempting to disrupt order in Egypt during this sensitive period. We are doing this temporarily to restore order,” he said, though he would not say when Rafah would be reopened. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak for the government.
Palestinians also reported that Egyptian authorities were suddenly pulling Palestinian passengers bound for Gaza off planes, and telling them that because of instability along the Gaza-Egypt border they would be deported until future notice.
“I am basically being told that I cannot go home,” said Mahmoud Abu Hamid, a 28-year-old Palestinian who spoke to McClatchy from Warsaw, Poland. Monday morning, Abu Hamid drove to the airport in Warsaw to board a flight to Cairo. From there, he was planning on driving the five hours to Rafah and cross the border in time to join his family for Ramadan.
“At the airport they told me I could not get on the plane, they said my travel documents were not valid and that I should try again in a few days,” he said.
The online Palestinian news site Electronic Intifada reported that one of its contributors, Yousef M. Aljamal, was deported from Cairo to the Malaysian capital Kuala Lumpur, where he had stopped in order to obtain an Egyptian visa. “All Palestinians who arrived yesterday were sent back to the countries they came from,” he wrote on Twitter, adding that he had seen Palestinians being deported to Algeria, Jordan, Pakistan, Canada and Malaysia.
RSS
My Yahoo