Rezqa: Gazans can no longer bear humiliation at Rafah crossing

[ 18/06/2011 - 02:52 PM ]

  GAZA, (PIC)-- The Palestinians can no longer bear the humiliation received at the Rafah border crossing, said Yousef Rezqa, advisor to Gaza prime minister Ismail Haneyya.

On Thursday, Egyptian authorities turned back six buses on a fleet of eight buses seeking to cross the border to Egypt.

“This was aimed at disciplining Gaza over the peaceful protests against humiliation at the Rafah crossing,” Rezqa said in a statement to the local daily Palestine on Saturday.

“Not one Egyptian would accept this unjustified policy,”*** he said.

“It is inconceivable that Arab Egypt’s doors and skies are open to Jews and Americans and Indians and Africans, and anyone who wishes to travel there, while it deprives Gaza, which defends the honor of the [Arabs and Muslims], of the human and legal right to travel.”

Gazans held protests at the Rafah border crossing after a surprise shutdown that allegedly took place for technical reasons. Egyptian authorities declared earlier that Egypt had permanently opened the crossing, which was tightly secured by the former Mubarak regime.

Rezqa said that Palestinians and Egyptians alike support opening the crossing and do not wish to return to the siege that Egypt took part in under Mubarak.

“We want free and dignified travel, and we do not accept the humiliation or extortion of commuters; and it is not true that Egyptian crossing authorities are under Israeli and U.S. pressure. Egypt has sovereign decision shared by no one. Egyptian leaders had said after the revolution by the words of Nabil al-Arabi that the closing of the Rafah border crossing was an act perpetrated by Mubarak against Gaza.”


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