Parliamentary Speaker Fathi Sorour on Tuesday said that opening the Rafah border crossing indefinitely was in the interest of Israel and against that of Palestinian territorial unity. He went on to stress Egypt’s insistence that Israel open its own border crossings with the West Bank and Gaza Strip, as these closures represented the real cause of the siege.
Sorour is flying Wednesday to Syria to attend a meeting of the Organization of the Islamic Conference, which calls for ending the four-year-old siege of the Gaza Strip.
Egypt will present its view at the conference that Israel should assume its legal responsibility for the Gaza Strip as an occupation force, in line with the Fourth Geneva Convention, and that the governing body in the strip–i.e., Palestinian resistance group Hamas–should control the situation there.
The Egyptian delegation to the conference will also reiterate Cairo’s longstanding call for reconciliation between Fatah and Hamas.
Translated from the Arabic Edition.
