MIDDLE EAST:Hundreds of Palestinians were trapped at one of the main crossing points out of the Gaza Strip yesterday, hoping to escape through Israel to the West Bank.
Israel's justice minister said the crowd should be allowed out, but so far the Erez crossing has remained closed, except to around 100 senior Fatah officials, who have been allowed to leave since Hamas seized control of Gaza last Thursday. Others have fled to Egypt.
The crowd of up to 300 people was made up mostly of young men, members of the Fatah-led security services who have been locked in fighting with Hamas gunmen for months. With them were dozens of women and children, some sleeping on the ground.
They sat in the long, concrete alley that leads to the heavily guarded Israeli boundary. Israeli troops fired shots in the air from the Israeli side of the crossing, and Israeli tanks were positioned nearby on sandy hilltops in Gaza.
Looters have ransacked the Palestinian side of the crossing, which until last week was staffed by security officials from Fatah. Yesterday some were even digging into the ground to steal electric cables.
Abu Iyad (25), an intelligence officer with Fatah, was trapped in the headquarters of the Palestinian intelligence agency in Gaza City last week when it was surrounded and attacked by Hamas fighters. He said he fled after the battle and has been at the Erez crossing since arriving on Friday.
"I know I'm wanted by Hamas," he said. "Like anyone who belongs to Fatah here, I feel miserable." He had given his regular identity and military identity cards to a man collecting names to pass to the Israelis for permission to cross.
Some way before the Erez crossing, Hamas gunmen have set up their own checkpoint. Every car is stopped and searched and Fatah members are turned back. To reach Erez, Fatah officials must skirt around the crossing. Several times Hamas gunmen have fired into the air.
One of the men in the crowd, who gave his name as Yazan, was a member of the Fatah presidential guard who had been trapped in a key headquarters in Gaza City when it was attacked by Hamas fighters last week.
He escaped, went to the home of a friend, changed his clothes and went to Erez with his wife and two children. Hamas fighters looted his apartment, he said.
"I can't go back to Gaza City. Hamas is there and I'm wanted. You can't imagine how I feel. I've been building myself up, and now everything is gone."
Also in the crowd was a woman, who gave her name as Nora, and her three children. Her husband was already in the West Bank and her cousin was killed in the latest round of fighting.
Israel's justice minister Daniel Friedman said the crowds should be allowed to reach the West Bank. "There's no reason Israel shouldn't treat them humanely and permit them simply to flee," he said. But other Israeli officials said the crossing was closed because there was no longer an authority in Gaza to co-ordinate with. "There's a Hamas administration now without links to Israel," said Shlomo Dror, a defence ministry liaison officer. - (Guardian service)