[ 15/02/2010 - 04:45 PM ]
CAIRO, (PIC)-- The team that is building the Egyptian steel wall along the borders with the Gaza Strip affirmed Monday that rocky sediments caused by the heavy rains and floods that hit the region few weeks ago have hampered the work in the wall.
"The sediments have indeed changed the geology of the soil where we are working and made it difficult for us to go ahead with the construction in that area that we believe is full of tunnels used by the Palestinians to bring food into the besieged Strip", one of the project consultant engineers, who preferred not be identified, said in a statement to the PIC.
"The project management has decided to temporary suspend the work in the wall due to the heavy rains and flood that swept the area a few weeks ago, but when we decided to resume the work we were surprised with the hard sediments that made it difficult for us to penetrate more than four meters", confirmed the consultant.
He added that the Egyptian government decided to form a team of Egyptian and foreign geologists to examine the problem and to find solutions before they continue the construction.
The Palestinian people said that the wall, once completed, would suffocate the Gaza Strip where more than 1.5 million Palestinians are living after the Israeli occupation sealed off all crossing points of Gaza from the north and the east while Egypt closed the Rafah crossing point from the south.
In the same context, tens of Egyptian activists and syndicate members organized a sit-in in front of the journalists syndicate to protest the siege on Gaza and construction of the steel wall.
The activists held placards demanding the immediate halt of the construction, and urging the Egyptian authorities to release Majdi Hussein, the Egyptian journalist who was sentenced to a two-year imprisonment term for entering the Gaza Strip through tunnels to show solidarity the people of Gaza.
They also chanted slogans urging the Egyptian authorities to stop exporting Gas to the Israeli occupation and to prioritize the Egyptian people with that Gas. Large numbers of Egyptian citizens were seen standing in long lines waiting to buy a cylinder of gas for coking.
Abdul Aziz Al-Husseini, one of the sit-inners, said that most of the public opinion surveys held around the steel wall showed that the great majority of the Egyptian people were against the construction of the wall, so, "in whose interest the Egyptian government is going ahead with the construction of the wall?".
River to Sea
Uprooted Palestinian
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