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Rafah crossing to remain closed until PA regains Gaza, says Mubarak
CAIRO: President Hosni Mubarak said Tuesday in a televised address that the Rafah border crossing will remain closed until Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas regains control of the Gaza Strip from Hamas.
“We in Egypt are not going to contribute to perpetuating the rift [between Hamas and the PA] by opening the Rafah crossing in the absence of the Palestinian Authority and EU observers in violation of the 2005 deal,” he said.
Egypt has come under heavy criticism, especially from Arab quarters, for its refusal to open the border crossing during the continued Israeli offensive on Gaza which has claimed the lives of 360 Gazans since Saturday.
The Egyptian consulate in Aden, Yemen was stormed by protestors.
A Yemeni security official said the protesters stormed the front gate, threw computers from windows, and climbed the two-story building to the roof and set fire to the Egyptian flag and hung up the Palestinian flag on top of the building.
Under the 2005 agreement between Egypt, the PA and Israel, the crossing can only be opened in the presence of EU monitors, who fled when Hamas took over the territory in June 2007.
Mubarak did criticize the Israeli offensive, saying, “We say to Israel that we reject and condemn its assaults which must cease immediately.”
Egypt did finally receive some 22 wounded Gazans on Monday evening and aid convoys from Egypt, Qatar and Libya managed to pass through into Gaza after having been held up at the border.
Protests are planned for today in Al-Arish against the Israeli offensive on Gaza and the continued closure of the Rafah border crossing.
Spontaneous protests by students broke out Tuesday in the areas of Al-Arish and Sheikh Zowayed and Rafah near the border with Gaza. However, today’s protest is organized by the popular committee for the rights of Sinai citizens, which is spearheaded by the North Sinai branch of the Tagammu party.
Secretary-general of the party in Al-Arish Ahsraf El Hefny told Daily News Egypt that the protest was being organized to highlight three main demands on their part, the reopening of the crossing, halting the export of Egyptian gas to Israel and the expulsion of the Israeli ambassador.
Hefny also commented on Mubarak’s statements, indicating that these types of comments were causing further upset to the residents near the border.
“It is also important to wipe the Egyptian people clean of the stain of betrayal. Egyptians are against the closure of the crossing and do not want to help Israel against the Palestinians. They call us traitors but it is not the people who are traitors. The protests make this clear,” he said.
More
http://dailystaregypt.com/article.aspx?ArticleID=18784
Egypt has come under heavy criticism, especially from Arab quarters, for its refusal to open the border crossing during the continued Israeli offensive on Gaza which has claimed the lives of 360 Gazans since Saturday.
The Egyptian consulate in Aden, Yemen was stormed by protestors.
A Yemeni security official said the protesters stormed the front gate, threw computers from windows, and climbed the two-story building to the roof and set fire to the Egyptian flag and hung up the Palestinian flag on top of the building.
Under the 2005 agreement between Egypt, the PA and Israel, the crossing can only be opened in the presence of EU monitors, who fled when Hamas took over the territory in June 2007.
Mubarak did criticize the Israeli offensive, saying, “We say to Israel that we reject and condemn its assaults which must cease immediately.”
Egypt did finally receive some 22 wounded Gazans on Monday evening and aid convoys from Egypt, Qatar and Libya managed to pass through into Gaza after having been held up at the border.
Protests are planned for today in Al-Arish against the Israeli offensive on Gaza and the continued closure of the Rafah border crossing.
Spontaneous protests by students broke out Tuesday in the areas of Al-Arish and Sheikh Zowayed and Rafah near the border with Gaza. However, today’s protest is organized by the popular committee for the rights of Sinai citizens, which is spearheaded by the North Sinai branch of the Tagammu party.
Secretary-general of the party in Al-Arish Ahsraf El Hefny told Daily News Egypt that the protest was being organized to highlight three main demands on their part, the reopening of the crossing, halting the export of Egyptian gas to Israel and the expulsion of the Israeli ambassador.
Hefny also commented on Mubarak’s statements, indicating that these types of comments were causing further upset to the residents near the border.
“It is also important to wipe the Egyptian people clean of the stain of betrayal. Egyptians are against the closure of the crossing and do not want to help Israel against the Palestinians. They call us traitors but it is not the people who are traitors. The protests make this clear,” he said.
More
http://dailystaregypt.com/article.aspx?ArticleID=18784
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Protesters around the Arab and Islamic world have attacked Egyptian embassies, accusing Cairo of helping Israel's longtime blockade of the territory and even giving a green light for the offensive - a sign of the gulf between an Arab public and some U.S.-allied governments that dislike Gaza's Hamas rulers.
Yemeni and Arab protesters, angered by Egyptian President Houssni Mubarak's support of Israeli war crimes in Gaza and his participation of the blockade imposed on Gaza for over a year and a half, attacked the Egyptian consulate in the southern city of Aden, Yemen on Tuesday.
The protest comes after more than 375 Palestinians were killed and more than 800 were wounded in four days of continuous Israeli air strikes on the enclave, of which Egypt is the only other neighbor.
A witness said the protesters burned the Egyptian flag and hoisted a Palestinian banner on top of building.
"Some of the protesters were able to enter the consulate and destroyed some property and papers," another witness said, as quoted by the Associated Press. Some of the protestors who participated in the attack were Egyptian.
The Egyptian government has been under attack for the past four days for helping Israel in the blockade on the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip for the past six months.
The official Yemeni news agency said 20 Arabs, including some Sudanese, Iraqis and Palestinians, were arrested "for attempting to enter the consulate."
The crisis over Gaza is the most serious foreign policy challenge to the Egyptian president who ruled the country since the assignation of the former Egyptian President Anwar Sadat on 6 October 1981.
The continuing suffering of the Palestinians on the hands of the Israelis for such a long time is eating away president Mubarak's legitimacy in his country.
In Libya, demonstrators in two days surrounded the Egyptian embassy and chanted slogans against Israel, demanding Egypt to open Rafah Crossing with Gaza.
More than 500 protesters massed outside Egypt's embassy in Syria, as others did days earlier in Lebanon.
During a demonstration in the Lebanese city of Sidon this week, people chanted slogans denouncing Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak as "a pig" and a "collaborator" with Israel.
Mubarak, whose nation is one of only two Arab states to have peace treaties with Israel, on Tuesday accused his critics of seeking "political profit" from the suffering of Palestinians in Gaza.
Embarrassing for Egyptian officials, Mubarak met with Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni only a day before Israel launched its assault, and the foreign minister was photographed smiling and shaking hands with her at a news conference.
Now, with television across the region showing the destruction and death in Gaza, the Arab and Islamic worlds are stoking the anger against Egypt by accusing it of giving an OK to Israel to end Hamas rule in Gaza.
"We do not accept that the attack on Gaza be announced from the heart of Cairo," Mohammed Nazzal, a Hamas senior leader, shouted on Al-Arabiya television Sunday, referring to the Livni visit.
Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah charged that Egypt's government was "taking part in the crime" against Palestinians and called on Egyptians to rise up and force the Rafah crossing open.
http://tripolipost.com/articledetail.asp?c=1&i=2690