Hamas slams Egypt for barring Arab delegation from visiting Gaza

[ 03/07/2010 - 10:11 AM ]

GAZA, (PIC)-- The Hamas Movement strongly denounced the Egyptian authorities for preventing the delegation of the Arab grassroots mobilization committee against the siege from crossing into the Gaza Strip and stressed that this behavior proved that the Rafah border crossing is practically closed.

Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri told the Palestinian information center (PIC) on Friday that the measures taken at the Rafah crossing do not reflect any change in Egyptian intentions to facilitate the movement of goods and people from and into Gaza.

Spokesman Abu Zuhri urged all the world's free people, and the Arab and Muslim committees and organizations which support Gaza not to cease their attempts to enter the Strip and to confront the arbitrary measures and obstacles placed by the Egyptian authorities.

He also called for continuing to send sea convoys to Gaza in light of Egypt's persistence in not opening the crossing in a natural way.

Informed sources said that the delegation's visit was intended for gathering accurate information on the vital needs of Gaza people before circulating it to pro-Gaza organizations and concerned parties.

For its part, the authority of crossings and borders in Gaza reported Saturday that the Egyptian authorities had refused to allow 3,223 passengers to travel through the Rafah crossing since it was opened partially one month ago.

The authority of crossings, however, said that 10,531 passengers were able to travel from Gaza through the crossing during this one-month period and 10,172 others, most of them were patients, returned to Gaza.

Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak ordered the opening of Rafah crossing in both direction earlier last month in the aftermath of Israel's deadly attack on Freedom Flotilla aid convoy, but the Egyptian authorities at the crossing prevented many aid convoys and delegations from visiting Gaza.

For his part, leader of the Muslim brotherhood in Egypt Mohamed Badi urged in his weekly letter the Muslim nation to go to Palestine to liberate it and the Aqsa Mosque from the Israeli occupation

Badi underlined that the resistance is the only way to destroy the "Satan and its allies", and to restore the usurped rights.

He recalled that the Muslim scholars used to meet annually in Jerusalem on the anniversary of the night journey of Islam's prophet, but these meetings stopped when the eastern part of the holy city was occupied in 1967.

The Egyptian leader also called on the Muslim scholars meeting in Turkey to visit Gaza to demand the world to end the blockade and to declare from there that their next meeting would be in Jerusalem after liberating it from the occupation.

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