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Cairo/Riyadh: Egypt began allowing Palestinians wounded in an Israeli offensive in the Gaza Strip to cross into Egypt for medical care yesterday via Gaza's closed southern border, Egyptian security sources said.
Israeli forces killed 61 people, nearly half of them civilians, in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip on Saturday, the bloodiest single day for Palestinians since the 1980s. Two Israeli soldiers were also killed.
Egyptian security sources at the Rafah border post said four wounded Palestinian civilians crossed into Egypt on Sunday. Twenty ambulances waited at the border to take more wounded.
The sources said Egypt had not set a limit on how many Palestinians would be allowed in, but was expecting at least 100. Hospitals in the northern Sinai were on alert and state news agency Mena said some wounded could be taken to Cairo for treatment.
Israel vowed yesterday to press on with its Gaza offensive and curb rocket strikes, threatening stronger action despite UN condemnation of assaults that have killed more than 100 Palestinians in five days of fighting.
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has been under pressure from some cabinet members to launch a broader offensive in the Gaza Strip, especially after fighters began firing longer-range rockets at Ashkelon.
Saudi Arabia compared Israel's offensive in the Gaza Strip to Nazi war crimes on Sunday and called on the international community to stop what it called the 'mass killings' of Palestinians.
Holocaust warning
"Saudi Arabia, which condemns the Israeli war crimes against the Palestinian people and the threats of Israeli officials to transform Gaza into an inferno, sees that Israel is simulating through these actions the Nazi war crimes," the Saudi official news agency SPA reported.
"Therefore, Saudi Arabia urges the international community, peace-sponsoring countries and the international Quartet to work to curb the Israeli military machine and stop it from carrying out mass killings and destruction against the Palestinian people and their properties."
The Saudi statement appeared to refer to a warning by Israel's deputy defence minister that Gazans risked a "shoah" - a Hebrew word for holocaust - if rocket fire into Israel did not stop. Aides later said he meant disaster and not holocaust.
Hamas held the comment up as proof their Israeli enemies were the "new Nazis."
"Saudi Arabia watches with utmost concern what is happening in Gaza; the killing of children, women and elderly, the destruction of houses over their owners' heads, the intimidation at the hands of Israel's military machine," SPA said.
Kuwait: MPs slam Arab silence
Several Islamist Kuwaiti MPs have criticised the Arab 'silence' to the Israeli 'massacre' in Gaza. Israeli attacks on northern Gaza, which has killed and injured hundreds of Palestinians, is "massacre executed by Israeli troops against curfew-bound Palestinians", said the Salafi Movement in Kuwait in a statement to the press on Sunday.
The group has three members in the 50-member parliament.
Blaming the escalation of death toll on 'silent Arab leaderships', the Salafi Movement, called upon Muslims "to perform their duties in supporting their brethren by all means". The statement denounced Israeli acts "which target Haniya and is aimed at annihilating the heroic resistance".
Meanwhile, MP Khodeir Al Enezi, from the Constitutional Bloc which is close to the Muslim Brotherhood, issued a statement denouncing the 'scary brutal massacre' which 'should not be passed silently'. The bloc has 6 members in the Parliament.
Al Khodeir's statement advocated pressuring the US 'a key supporter of Israel' via mutual ties with GCC states to end these attacks, as well as threatening to boycott any country or organisation supporting these massacres.
MP Adnan Abdul Samad voiced his concern over the 'Arab silence' in regards to Palestinian victimisation. Abdul Samad questioned the absence of any action from the Muslim and Arab world.
- Laila Ali, Special to Gulf News
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