Region | Palestinian Territories
Israel wants to cut Gaza links
Egypt is angrily accusing Israel of trying to dump all responsibility for the troubled Gaza Strip in its lap.
- Agencies
- Published: 00:04 January 25, 2008
- Egyptian soldiers clash with Palestinians trying to cross from Gaza into Egypt at the Rafah crossing.
- Image Credit: Reuters
Cairo: The Gaza border crisis caused another sharp flap on Thursday in Egyptian-Israeli relations, with Egypt angrily accusing Israel of trying to dump all responsibility for the troubled Gaza Strip in its lap.
It was not clear if the proposal for Israel to relinquish all control over Gaza, expressed privately by several Israeli officials and publicly by one, was serious or just an effort to test international reaction to the idea. But Egyptian officials were fuming.
This is a wrong assumption," Hossam Zaki, the official spokesman for Egypt's foreign ministry, said of the Israeli hints.
Earlier, Israel's deputy defence minister said the country wants to cut its links with the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip after fighters blasted open the territory's border with Egypt in defiance of an Israeli blockade.
Matan Vilnai said Israel wanted to wash its hands of Gaza altogether by handing over the supply of electricity, water and medicine to others. An Israeli security official said Egypt should take over responsibility.
Gazans stock up
"We need to understand that when Gaza is open to the other side we lose responsibility for it. So we want to disconnect from it," Vilnai said.
Hundreds of Gazans on Thursday streamed past the flattened border wall into Egypt on foot or donkeys to stock up on goods in short supply, including sheep, motorcycles and medicines.
A spokesman for Hamas rejected Vilnai's idea as an attempt to separate Gaza from the occupied West Bank.
According to the official WAFA Palestinian news agency, Abbas also said Israel might seize the chance to sever Gaza from the West Bank, the other territory he wants for a state, and warned of "grave consequences" for a US-backed peace drive.
In Israel, the government warned its citizens to stay away from the Sinai, warning that the threat of abduction had increased since the fall of the Rafah border.
In Geneva, the UN Human Rights Council said on Thursday it deplored the "grave violations" being committed by Israel in Gaza, home to 1.5 million people, and demanded it immediately lift the blockade of the territory.
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