2023-10-16 09:59:11
If an agreement has been reached with Israel to allow American nationals to pass, the Egyptian authorities are demanding that the entry of aid into Gaza be facilitated.
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Humanitarian aid arriving from several capitals piled up on Sunday in Egyptian Sinai, bordering the Gaza Strip bombed and besieged by Israel, without however reaching Palestinian territory, witnesses told AFP.
Since three Israeli bombings in less than 24 hours, Monday and Tuesday, on the Palestinian Rafah terminal, the border crossing to Egypt has been closed.
On Saturday, an American official told AFP that Egypt and Israel had agreed to let the Americans leave the Gaza Strip through Rafah.
But Egypt set conditions. She “refuses that the border post is solely dedicated to the passage of foreigners”said highly placed sources cited by media close to intelligence. “The Egyptian position is clear: the condition (for these crossings) is that the entry of aid into Gaza is facilitated”they added.
On Sunday, witnesses reported that the concrete blocks installed by the Egyptians after Israeli bombings to reinforce their border were still in place, seeming to indicate that no crossing was planned immediately.
Already, shipments of Jordanian, Turkish and Emirati aid have landed at El-Arich airport, capital of North Sinai, as well as medical equipment covering the needs of 300,000 people in the Gaza Strip sent by the World Health Organization (WHO). Egypt sent a convoy of around a hundred trucks carrying 1,000 tonnes of aid.
Israel, which controls Gaza’s two other openings to the world, has decreed a “complete seat” after 16 years of blockade, prohibiting the entry of food and cutting off water and electricity to the 2.4 million inhabitants of the Palestinian territory.
It also increases pressure on Egypt, which fears that its border will be forced by the Gazans as was the case in 2008 at the start of the Israeli blockade.
His army ordered the 1.1 million inhabitants of the northern Gaza Strip on Friday to leave for the south bordering Egypt.
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