RAFAH BORDER CROSSING, Egypt — Hundreds of Palestinian residents of the Gaza Strip arrived here by the busload on Saturday to pass through the reopened border into Egypt, taking the first tangible steps out of a four-year Israeli blockade.
“I feel this is the start of freedom,” said Hasna el-Ryes, 45, a Gaza resident waiting to cross into Egypt so she could travel to visit sons studying in Britain. “You can’t imagine how much we have suffered.”
While a gradual loosening of the border controls over the last year had allowed some Gaza residents to cross — including registered students or those seeking medical treatment — many of those making the trip on Saturday said they felt a new stirring of hope at Egypt’s decision to stop enforcing Israel’s blockade of the Palestinian territory.
They cheered the decision as a humanitarian gesture to Gaza residents but also as an important concession to make possible the reconciliation deal that Egypt brokered between the militant group Hamas, which rules in Gaza, and the moderate Fatah faction, which governs the West Bank. And they saluted the Egyptian revolution that brought about a new spirit of independence.
“The people are taking their rights, and when the Egyptians rise it helps the Palestinians,” said Faris Awad, 48, returning to visit family in Cairo for the first time since the start of the blockade, just in time for a wedding.
The Rafah border crossing has for years been a kind of geographic emblem of Egypt’s complicated relationship with Israel.
For the Arab world, Egypt’s determination under President Hosni Mubarak to secure the border came to represent its decision to put its partnership with Israel and the United States ahead of solidarity with its fellow Muslims languishing in of Gaza. Inside Egypt, the closed border was a projection of Mr. Mubarak’s self-image as a bulwark against militant groups like Hamas. For Palestinians, it represented a betrayal.
In Israel, Rafah was a reminder of the superficial quality of its partnership with Mr. Mubarak, because while his security forces closed the surface crossing, Hamas and its Egyptian sympathizers continued to carry in weapons and goods through a not-so-secret network of tunnels. Less acknowledged was the Rafah border’s function as a kind of safety valve, helping to relieve enough of the humanitarian needs within Gaza to avoid a crisis that might shock the world — for example, by letting sick Gazans through for urgent medical care.
But the opening on Saturday is a reminder of how things are changing between Egypt and Israel after Mr. Mubarak’s ouster. Both the Israeli government and the military council that rules Egypt now are quite aware that the vast majority of Egyptians loathe their country’s support of Israel and are demanding a greater voice in foreign policy.
Egypt’s interim foreign minister, Nabil el-Araby, a driving force behind the Hamas-Fatah agreement and the border opening and who is about to leave his post to become director of the Arab League, has continued his efforts to tilt Egypt away from Israel and toward the Palestinians. In a statement on Thursday after attending a meeting of the so-called non-aligned movement, he urged its member countries to support the request for United Nations recognition of a Palestinian state to put pressure on Israel, and he condemned Israel’s settlements as “attempts to alter the character of the city of Jerusalem.”
Israel issued no statements on Saturday in response to the border opening, but its officials have made clear that they consider the looser controls a major security risk. It began its blockade of Gaza four years ago to keep Hamas, which consolidated control in Gaza after winning elections, from being resupplied with rockets and other weapons to use against Israelis.
Musbah Mohamed Halawin, 59, waiting in a wheelchair to travel to Cairo for the first time in 30 years, called the Egyptians “brothers.”
“Egypt is the only thing we have after God,” he said.
Samah Ahmad, 30, did a little dance as she raced down a hall holding out her freshly stamped Palestinian passport. She said she had tried to cross twice in the last 10 days — rejected once by the Palestinian authorities and once by the Egyptians.
She was planning to travel to Turkey for a meeting of activists to discuss ways to build on the reconciliation agreement between Hamas and Fatah. “Now we are starting our own revolution, not to tear down the Palestinian government but to rebuild it,” she said. “We are still under occupation, and we need to be like one hand to overcome it.”
Many noted that Saturday’s opening was in a sense an extension of a gradual loosening, first by Israel last year in the aftermath of its forces killing of nine participants in a Turkish aid flotilla attempting to enter Gaza. In the second half of last year, about 19,000 people a month crossed the Rafah border both ways, slightly less than half the rate before the blockade, according to human rights groups. Then after the revolution, Egypt began loosening its border restrictions as well. By the beginning of May, the border station was already open several days a week, and patients needing medical treatment, registered students and some others were allowed to cross.
And the formal, seven-days-a-week opening on Saturday did not remove all restrictions. It left in place a blockade on the shipment into Gaza of goods, including concrete that is badly needed to repair buildings damaged in clashes with Israel. “This is good, but we are looking for Egypt to break the siege, to allow the shipment of cement and trade,” said Gamal el-Din, a Palestinian engineer entering Egypt.
Egyptian officials have said they hope to soon open the border to at least some goods. There are still restrictions on passengers as well. Although women, children and older Palestinians can enter without a visa, men from 18 to 40 are required to obtain one, for security reasons.
Fala el-Helow, 35, had taken her 16-year-old son out of school before exams to bring him through the historic reopening to visit a sick brother studying in Cairo; she had been turned away at the border just a week before. But she said she could still not bring her husband, 39.
After years caught among the conflicting and sometimes capricious bureaucracies of Israel, Egypt and the Palestinian Authority, she said she was tempering her expectations. “The Egyptians are moody,” she said, as an Egyptian customs officer standing on a platform behind a counter called out names and tossed stamped passports into a crowd of Palestinians. “You never know what they will do.”
While the terminal holding Egyptians entering Gaza remained almost empty for most of the day, a steady stream of Gazans kept flowing the other way. Aish el-Meleit, a 55-year-old farmer, said he had come for a chance to visit an ailing aunt in Egypt; he had missed the deaths and funerals of both his parents because of the blockade.
By early afternoon, six buses, each carrying about 50 travelers, had dropped their passengers on the Palestinian side, the police said. Only two people had been returned from the Egyptian side, compared with nearly 40 on a typical day last week.
Some arrived with inflated expectations. Abu Mohamed, 70, a Palestinian who has lived for the last 60 years in the Egyptian town of el-Arish near the border, arrived before 9 a.m. hoping for the first time in 30 years to see his family in Gaza. He had been unable to obtain a passport from the Palestinian Authority, which issues them in cooperation with Israel, and he hoped to enter using a letter he had obtained from Egyptian officials.
But after a few hours of rejection by the border guards, he stormed off, cursing. “After 60 years, why could they not let us in? Disgusting,” he said.
Still, Hosni Hamid, 63, who operates the snack bar inside the Palestinian waiting area, said traffic was double or triple the usual, and business was booming. “Palestinians should visit Egypt, Egyptians should visit Palestinians. It is good for everyone,” he said. “Why not?”
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