Israel Matzav

'Palestinians' trying to escape Gaza

'Hundreds' of 'Palestinians' stormed the Erez crossing point from Gaza into the Israeli Negev today in a bid to escape from Gaza. According to an Israel Radio report earlier this evening, Israel allowed about 150 Fatah officials to move from Gaza to Judea and Samaria. Some Fatah officials escaped Gaza into Egypt and some of them may also be moving to Judea and Samaria. YNet summarizes who's going where:

Israel allowed senior Fatah officials and their families to move to the West Bank, via Erez crossing. Security sources confirmed Saturday that some 200 Palestinians had come through Erez crossing in recent days, and about 60 had not returned to Gaza.

Among those not returning were Fatah members who were detained by Hamas operatives in recent days and released after the Islamist organization granted a general pardon to senior members of its rival faction.

The group also included Fatah spokesmen Tawfiq Abu Hussa and Maher Miqdad, National Security Organization Commander Jamal el-Qaid and Fatah secretary in the Gaza strip Majed Abu Shamala.

Hamas forces recently attacked and broke into Miqdad's home, after killing a large number of Fatah gunmen who were protecting the building. The Fatah leader had managed to escape the area prior incident and, according to associates, is now in Cairo.

Most of the other senior Fatah members have chosen to go to Ramallah, where they can join Fatah's former leader in Gaza, Mohammed Dahlan.

Other Palestinians who were able to make it through Erez in recent days were those with VIP IDs – representatives of international organizations, merchants, or individuals in possession of foreign passports. Among them were 137 merchants with entry permits into Israel who have since returned to Gaza.

The IDF had prevented the passage of civilians since Saturday afternoon, Palestinian sources said.

Saturday morning, a number of families were able to pass through, but hundreds of Palestinians who arrived at the crossing Saturday afternoon were not authorized to cross over.

Three comments about this: First, if all these 'Palestinians' were so enamored with Hamas that they voted for them, why are they now running away from Gaza? I thought this was what they wanted.

Second, why don't I see 22 Arab countries jumping up to volunteer to take refugees (note to my regular readers - no scare quotes around that word this time) from Gaza? Why is it that only Israel is allowing them safe passage?

And third, why the %$@#$ are we going to allow the murderer Muhammed Dahlan to move to Ramallah? That's less than a ten-minute drive from my house! The only place in that area where Dahlan should be is the security prison on the outskirts of town where he should be held pending trial for the Kfar Darom terror attack and the murder of the three US consular workers.

By the way, the picture above shows how Hamas is operating the Rafah crossing. Looks just like your local airport, doesn't it?

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 10:35 PM