Mohammed Mar'i Saudi Gazette RAMALLAH – A senior official of Hamas government Saturday said that Egypt will allow the entry of construction materials for the Qatar financed projects into the Gaza Strip through the Rafah Crossing. Maher Abu Sabheh, Hamas's director of the crossings, said that Egypt informed his government that 20 trucks loaded with construction materials, including cement, will enter through the Rafah crossing between the Gaza Strip and Egypt daily and not through the Kerem Shalom Crossing on the border between Israel, Gaza Strip and Egypt. The crossing is under full Israeli inspection. As a result of the lack of materials, Gazans started using earth resources to manufacture mud bricks in an attempt to overcome the Israeli restrictions. The product is a solid block, ready for construction. It is a mixture of sand, clay, calcium and water that are compressed together in one manual machine. Qatar's Emir Sheikh Hamad Bin Khalifa Al-Thani and his wife Sheikha Mozah traveled from Egypt to Gaza in October, a political move to break Israel's blockade on Gaza. The Emir declared a rebuilding project which included a housing complex, a hospital and the development of three main roads. Qatar has allocated $400 million for the project. The development comes as the Hamas government of Ismail Haniyeh is preventing the return of European monitors to the Rafah border crossing, despite a 2005 agreement between Israel and the Palestinian Authority (PA) requiring their presence at the border. Abu Sabheh said that “there is no need for their return, since they have forsaken the sick who died at the Rafah crossing and were in need of their intervention.” He added that the Europeans have asked to return to Rafah following the ceasefire agreement reached between Israel and Hamas on November 21, which ended the eight day Israeli aggression on the Gaza Strip. The European Union Border Assistance Mission in Rafah (EUBAM Rafah) began operating at the Rafah crossing in November 2005, following Israel's disengagement from the Gaza Strip, as part of the Agreement on Movement and Access signed between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. Under the agreement, EU monitors on the ground were complemented by a system of surveillance cameras, which broadcast the activity at the border to an Israeli control center at the Kerem Shalom border crossing. EUBAM was active at the Rafah crossing until June 2007, when Hamas took control of the Gaza Strip. Today, EUBAM operates out of an office near Tel Aviv but, according to its website, it is “ready to re-engage at very short notice.” Ismail Al-Ashqar, a Gaza-based Hamas legislator, said that will not happen any time soon. “The Rafah crossing is a Palestinian-Egyptian crossing only, and there is no place for foreigners in it from now on,” Ashqar told Hamas's Al-Aqsa TV station. “Palestinians do not want to return to the past on the issue of Rafah's land crossing. The European observers have left the crossing, never to return.” Ashqar added that Hamas would only reconsider the European presence at the border if the EU pressured Israel to reopen Gaza's seaport and airport, which has been inactive since October 2000.
