Hundreds of thousands cross downed Gaza wallArab street erupts in protests supporting Palestinians

Thousands of Palestinians continued to cross into Egypt for a second day on Thursday to buy much needed supplies.

Egyptian officials have warned that the border with the Gaza Strip, breached by Palestinian fighters seeking to end an Israeli blockade, could soon be sealed.

Egyptian border guards, some armed with electric prods, channeled crowds through a handful of openings, where Palestinians shouted and jostled their way into Egypt.

Palestinians make their way to Egypt

But Egyptian officials have warned the freedom granted to Gaza’s residents to shop and visit relatives will soon come to an end.

The issue has turned into a political row between Egypt and Israel.

Matan Vilnai, the Israeli deputy defense minister, said Israel gradually wants to relinquish responsibility for Gaza, now that the territory’s border with Egypt has been blown open.

Egypt angrily rejected this and said it would not change border arrangements.

“The border will go back as normal,” said Hossam Zaki, an Egyptian foreign ministry spokesman.

“The current situation is only an exception and for temporary reasons.”

“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.

A spokesman for Hamas, which seized control of Gaza after routing Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah forces in June, said Israel was not exempt from responsibility “since the Gaza Strip is still an occupied land”.

An aide to Abbas said the Israeli idea could be aimed at permanently severing Gaza from the occupied West Bank, the other territory Palestinians seek for an eventual state.

The blasts that made holes in Gaza’s border wall with Egypt came after the Israeli government blocked fuel and aid shipments into Gaza beginning last week.

A series of Israeli air raids on Gaza over the past 10 days also claimed the lives of more than 40 people, most of them fighters.

Israel says its action is aimed at halting rockets fired into southern Israel from Gaza by Hamas fighters and denies that it is engaging in collective punishment.

But Salam Fayyad, the Palestinian prime minister whose government is based in the West Bank and has no control over Gaza, called the situation in the Gaza Strip “absolutely disastrous.”

“This is a pressure cooker kind of situation and a very damaging situation — one that threatens to spiral out of control,” Fayyad told delegates at the World Economic Forum at Davos in Switzerland.

On Thursday, Jordan’s King Abdullah II told George Bush that Israel’s blockade of the Gaza Strip threatened peace efforts in the Middle East.

Bush has said he believes a peace agreement between Palestinians and Israelis is possible by the time he leaves office in early 2009.

“Israel must refrain from unilateral actions, including the imposition of economic siege and escalation of military operations against the Palestinian people,” an official statement quoted Abdullah as saying in a telephone conversation with Bush.

“These policies threaten to undermine efforts made over the past weeks and months to advance the peace process.”

The border breach has given a popularity boost to Hamas, which took control of the Gaza Strip in June last year, allowing the group to claim it broke the Israeli siege.

“Hamas has won the strategic battle,” said Abu Ali, a 45-year-old Gazan businessman who was on the Egyptian side to buy materials for his construction company.

“Ask anyone here how they reached this place, and they will tell you it was because of Hamas.”

Also on Thursday, UNRWA, the U.N. agency aiding Palestinian refugees, urged Arab Gulf countries to provide about $9.8m in aid money to Gaza.

“The [Israeli] siege has led to a significant increase in the burden on Palestinian civilians,” said Peter Ford, an UNRWA representative.

He said the money would buy food, medicine and other supplies for Gaza’s residents.

Meanwhile, despite intensifying calls for international pressure to address the fast deteriorating situation in the Gaza Strip, observers and some diplomats say the U.N. Security Council has proved as ineffective as it has been for many years concerning issues related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

On Tuesday, the Council called an emergency meeting during which a vast majority of delegates strongly condemned Israel’s blockade of Gaza and charged that it was violating international humanitarian law.

Yet at the end of the day, the Council failed to adopt a draft presidential statement calling for Israel “to ensure unhindered access for humanitarian assistance to the Palestinian people and to open the border crossings to facilitate the passage of exports and imports to the Gaza Strip.”

Why? Because it was not acceptable to the U.S. delegation, a diplomat present at the meeting told IPS. The U.S. rejected the first draft statement because it did not cover Israeli concerns about rocket fire by Palestinian militants into its territory.

The Council called another meeting Wednesday, but failed to issue a presidential statement based on the third draft, which, according to the source, was prepared by the diplomats representing the European Union.

“We were hoping…but unfortunately we have not agreed,” South African ambassador Dumisani Kumalo told reporters about the outcome of Wednesday’s meeting, adding that “everybody (in the Council) said they wanted the Security Council to speak out.”

Asked why the Council is discussing a presidential draft statement instead of a resolution, the South African envoy told IPS: “We thought we would be able to speak quickly, but it’s not so quick.”

A presidential statement is usually nonbinding and not enforceable, but it requires the consensus of all 15 members of the Council. A resolution, which requires a majority of votes and can be sunk by a veto from one of the five permanent members, is often legally binding and enforceable.

A European diplomat said the U.S. objected to the latest draft, even though it addresses concerns about rocket fire by the Palestinians into southern Israel. According to him, without explaining the sticking points, the U.S. delegates said they needed more time to consult with Washington.

On Tuesday, U.S. ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad told the Council that Washington was equally concerned about the situation in Gaza and that the U.S. would continue to provide humanitarian aid to the Palestinians. But at the same time, he fully supported the Israeli view that it was the Palestinian militants who are responsible for the misery of their people.

“We believe the current situation is a direct result of Hamas’s policies and actions,” he said, adding that the United States “condemns in the strongest terms the ongoing firing of rockets and mortars from Gaza into Israel by terror groups.”

In defending the virtual siege imposed on Gaza, the Israeli diplomat Gilad Cohen said the current situation is the “consequence of many choices, repeatedly the wrong choices, made by the Palestinians, to adopt terrorism and violence over peace and negotiations with Israel.”Except for the European Union (EU), Israel’s contention that the Palestinian militancy is responsible for the blockade and power shutdown in Gaza is being forcefully rejected by all the major political blocs within the U.N. system, including the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), the Arab League and the African Union (AU).

“The violent military escalation by Israel constitutes a grave breach of international law, including humanitarian and human rights law,” said Cuban envoy Rodrigo Malmierca Diaz in speaking before the Council on behalf of the 118-member NAM.

Like other regional groups, NAM wants the Council to take immediate action to ensure the supply of food, medicines and fuel to the Gaza Strip and to ask Israel to stop using its military might against Palestinian civilians.

While critical of the Palestinian rocket attacks, the E.U. has described the continued Israeli incursions into the occupied areas as “collective punishment” of 1.5 million Gaza residents. Various U.N. agencies responsible for delivering humanitarian aid and Western rights advocacy groups have also raised grave concerns about the suffering of the Palestinian civilian population in Gaza.

According to the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, about 80 percent of Palestinians in Gaza live in extreme poverty and depend on aid agencies for food and other essential items.

The World Health Organization (WHO) said Tuesday it was worried about the functioning of intensive care units, operating theatres and emergency rooms in Gaza as a result of frequent power outages and border restrictions.

The WHO estimates that only 50 percent of basic commercial food imports were met during the past two months.

On Tuesday, speaking in Geneva about the situation in Gaza, the U.N.’s top human rights official Louise Arbour urged the international community to meet its due responsibility to protect civilians “in particular where and when the authorities concerned are unable or unwilling to do so.”

“The people of Gaza,” she continued, “look legitimately to the international community to respond with urgency and with appropriate measures to their desperate and still worsening situation.”

Some of the world’s leading independent human rights defenders, such as the London-based Amnesty International, have made similar calls about the need to protect the civilian population in Gaza and southern Israel.

In the past, the U.S. has vetoed more than 40 Security Council resolutions condemning Israeli actions.

Demonstrations occurred all over the Arab World in support of the Palestinians.  Arabs in Yemen, Egypt, Syria, Jordan and Lebanon protested as well as Iranians in Tehran.