If an agreement is reached with Israel to allow American citizens to pass through, the Egyptian authorities will demand that the entry of aid into Gaza be made easier.
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Humanitarian aid from several capitals piled up on Sunday in Egypt’s Sinai, which borders the Israeli-bombed and besieged Gaza Strip but without reaching Palestinian territory, witnesses told AFP.
The border crossing into Egypt has been closed since three Israeli bombings in less than 24 hours on Monday and Tuesday at the Palestinian Rafah terminal.
On Saturday, an American official told AFP that Egypt and Israel had agreed to allow Americans to leave the Gaza Strip via Rafah.
But Egypt imposed conditions. It “refuses to allow the border post to be used exclusively for the transit of foreigners,” said senior sources quoted by intelligence-affiliated media. “The Egyptian position is clear: the condition (of these crossings) is that the entry of aid into Gaza is facilitated,” they added.
On Sunday, witnesses reported that the concrete blocks that the Egyptians erected to reinforce their border after Israeli bombings were still in place, appearing to indicate that no immediate crossing was planned.
Deliveries of Jordanian, Turkish and Emirati aid have already landed at El-Arich Airport, the capital of North Sinai, and medical equipment has been delivered by the World Health Organization (WHO) to meet the needs of 300,000 people in the Gaza Strip. Egypt sent a convoy of around a hundred trucks carrying 1,000 tons of relief supplies.
Israel, which controls Gaza’s other two openings to the world, declared a “total siege” after a 16-year blockade, banning access to food and cutting off water and electricity to the Palestinian territory’s 2.4 million residents.
It also increases pressure on Egypt, which fears its border will be enforced by Gazans, as was the case at the start of the Israeli blockade in 2008.
His army ordered the 1.1 million residents of the northern Gaza Strip on Friday to head south to Egypt.