Palestinian Authority spokesmen, as well as individual Palestinian travelers, claim that Egypt is hindering their entry, and otherwise harassing and humiliating them, presumably in retaliation for the ordeal experienced by Egyptian Foreign Minister Maher at al Aqsa mosque, at the hands of a Palestinian mob on December 12th.

The Jerusalem Post reports that

...hundreds of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip were turned back at the Rafah border crossing... [which is] the only gateway to the outside world for Palestinians living in the Gaza Strip. A PA official said that Palestinians who arrived at Cairo Airport from different countries were also denied entry to Egypt. Earlier this week, a group of Palestinian students was forced to return to Jordan shortly after landing in Cairo.

The London—based Al—Quds al—Arabi daily reported that the wife of senior Hamas official, Mussa Abu Marzuk, was one of dozens of Palestinians held at Cairo Airport for 24 hours last week before she was told that she would be put on a plane back to Syria.

The PLO's 'foreign minister' recently visited Cairo with a high level delegation to apologize for the Maher incident, and is reported to have raised the topic of the retaliatory behavior of Egyptian officials. The delegation requested a meeting with President Hosni Mubarak, but were turned down.

"We were told that he's seething with anger," said the PA official. "But we had positive talks with Ahmed Maher and other senior Egyptian officials, and we agreed that we must not allow this unfortunate incident to harm the special relations between the Palestinian people and Egypt."

Meanwhile, the Egyptian Consul in Gaza, Muhammed Abdel Aziz, is denying any harassment, and maintining that the Israeli media is blowing the reports out of proportion, to exacerbate relations between the Palestinians and Egypt. Given the propensity of Palestinian mobs to attack Egyptian officials, that is probably a wise move on Aziz's part, no matter what the truth might be.

Posted by Thomas  01 03 04