Hamas: We will close tunnels if Egypt opens Rafah

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Hamas is prepared to close all the underground tunnels along the border between the Gaza Strip and Egypt if the Egyptians agree to reopen the Rafah border crossing on a permanent basis, Hamas officials announced Sunday.

“The tunnels are a necessary and popular method of breaking the criminal blockade on the Gaza Strip,” Salah Bardaweel, a Hamas legislator and spokesman, told reporters.

He said that the tunnels were needed “to consolidate the steadfastness of the Palestinian people and their resistance against occupation, which is working to Judaize the holy sites and is killing children, women and ill people.”

On Saturday, the Palestinian Authority called on the Egyptians to destroy the tunnels, saying they posed a threat to Egyptian security and damaged chances of achieving Palestinian unity.

Bardaweel said that a “civilized alternative” to the tunnels would be the opening of the Rafah terminal to goods and passengers.

“We are confident that the Egyptian leadership would work toward creating this alternative and we hope that the border crossing would not be closed for too long,” Bardaweel added.

He pointed out that Muslims were now marking the fasting month of Ramadan and would soon celebrate Id al-Fitr, the holiday marking the end of the 30-day fast.

The Hamas official reiterated the claim that Israel was behind last week’s terror attack in Sinai, in which 16 Egyptian border guards were killed by unidentified terrorists.

“The attack serves the higher interest of Israeli occupation,” Bardaweel claimed. “There is a lot of theoretic and practical evidence to back this up. The Zionist enemy has been seeking to undermine Egyptian security and embarrass the Egyptian leadership, which it believes is hostile to the aggressive Zionist project.”

Bardaweel also accused Israel of seeking to drive a wedge between Egypt and Hamas in light of improved relations between the two sides and Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh’s recent visit to Cairo, “where he was welcomed as the legitimate prime minister of the Palestinian government.”

Bardaweel also accused the Palestinian Authority of spreading lies in an attempt to implicate Hamas and the Gaza Strip following the Sinai terror attack.

He said that the Egyptians have not notified Hamas about the possible involvement of any Palestinian from the Gaza Strip in the attack.

Hamas is prepared to work together with the Egyptian authorities to reveal the identity of the perpetrators, he added.

Hamas leader Mahmoud Zahar also expressed his government’s readiness to destroy the tunnels once the Rafah border crossing is reopened.

He also called for setting up a free trade zone between the Gaza Strip and Egypt.

Zahar told the Saudi-owned Al-Arabiya TV station that the closure of the tunnels would be in the context of Hamas’s efforts to help the Egyptians.

He too strongly denied Hamas involvement in the Sinai terror attack. He said that those who carried out the attack were acting on orders of Israel in a bid to frame Hamas.

“Why should Hamas, for the first time ever, carry out an attack outside Palestine?” Zahar asked. “And even if Hamas wanted to strike against targets outside Palestine, why should it attack the Egyptian brothers? Is it religiously permissible to kill a fasting person while he’s having his meal?”

J-Post


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