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MIDEAST
Garlic For My Mother
By Mohammed Omer
RAFAH, Gaza Strip, Feb 4, 2008 (IPS) - Fourteen-year-old Ahmed Salah is not sure when he can give his mother a surprise like that again.
"Where have you been?" his mother said to him after he disappeared from home the first time when the Gazan border with Egypt was breached late last month. What he brought back said just where. "See what I got you. Garlic, washing powder...and there is smoked fish!"
The mother is thrilled to see her son back safe, and to see what he brought. The garlic made her particularly happy.
"I heard my mother say there is no garlic left at home, so I decided to bring her some," Ahmed told IPS. "There's a lot in Egypt. Egyptians received us very well, offering tea and biscuits, even though this was right after militants blew open a long stretch of the Wall," Ahmed says of his three-day visit.
Ahmed is among the hundreds of thousands who ventured into al-Arish in Egypt in search of all that has not been available within Gaza Strip - walled in, and under sanctions. But now it does not seem that they can cross over so easily again.
On Sunday Egypt blocked remaining gaps in the border barricade, ending 12 days of free movement. Egyptian troops were allowing Palestinians back into Gaza, but not letting any more come in. Egyptian officials declared in Cairo that they would "never" allow the border to be breached again.
On Jan. 23 unknown men set off at least 17 explosives to breach the steel and concrete wall that divides Gaza from Egypt at the border crossing Rafah. The blasts came after at least two weeks of preparation for the blasts, in which electric cutting equipment was used to bring down several hundred metres of the steel section of the wall.
Hamas, the Palestinian political party that was elected in Gaza, has denied responsibility for the breach. It says the breach was the inevitable consequence of starving and caging in 1.5 million people for months on end. Hamas does not recognise Israel. This, and the launching of crude rockets into Israeli territory from Gaza, have led Israel to cut off essential supplies to Gaza.
An estimated 350,000 people from all over Gaza crossed into Egypt the very first day. Until then Gazans had endured a siege of nearly 18 months, and a total lockdown since September 2007. Now they have a short lease of stock to live on.
They returned with food, medicines, milk, cheese, livestock, and fuel, as well as cigarettes, shoes, furniture, mattresses, cement, natural gas, car parts, and even back-up generators. Caged in for two years, people have been jubilant. The crossing brought a level of happiness absent during the impoverished Eid celebrations in December.
But Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak is believed to have been pressured by the U.S. to close the border. In northern Sinai, loudspeakers had been announcing for some time that borders would be shut. The Egyptian police gave notice by using water cannons and firing warning shots in the air to force back crowds of people desperate to get through for more basic necessities.
Already, people in Gaza are nostalgic about the freedom they found briefly to cross over into Egypt. "I drank a whole bottle of Coca Cola alone, and I ate Egyptian fish," a youth told his friends. "No shooting, no Israeli attacks. I saw people sitting on the beach peacefully."
And yet, most people do not want to leave Gaza for good. "Gaza is my hometown, and I would never leave it for anything," says an elderly man, who had crossed over only to visit his little grandchildren he had never seen before. (END)
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