Emily Mader, Wednesday 23/01/2008, 6:08pm, human rights
Egypt opened its Rafah crossing into the Gaza Strip on Wednesday January 2, 2008, as 2,000 Palestinian pilgrims returned home from a traditional pilgrimage to Mecca. The Rafah crossing was closed in June when the militant group Hamas took control in Gaza. The opening of the crossing has caused much controversy over the screening of returning pilgrims. Israeli officials claim that returning Hamas officials may have brought back weapons or money to fund terrorist activities. Egyptian officials have stated that they opened the crossing only as a humanitarian effort to let the pilgrims back into their homes, not as a signal of support to any militant Palestinian groups.
The conflict between Israel and Palestine has long been one in which innocent civilians have paid the price. Perhaps Egypt really did just want to give them a break and let them go home without having to undergo a grueling screening process, as they would have at the Israeli gates. The question of whether or not they were armed comes as a double-edged sword: on the one hand, yes, it is a viable interest to stop Hamas from gaining weapons, but on the other hand, it is not necessarily right to then require this entire group of people to have all possessions rummaged through by a foreign government. Would we as US citizens allow Canada to do that to us? Probably not. So it is not hard for me to understand why Egypt would have let these 2,000 people through their crossing. But, at the same time, I understand why Israel is peeved.
http://libproxy.uncg.edu:2086/us/lnacademic/results/docview/docview.do?risb=21_T2897270981&format=GNBFI&sort=RELEVANCE&startDocNo=1&resultsUrlKey=29_T2897270984&cisb=22_T2897270983&treeMax=true&treeWidth=0&csi=8075&docNo=15
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