Islamic Jihad rejects Palestine state within the 1967 borders
Egypt reopens Gaza crossing in humanitarian move
GAZA: The radical Palestinian group Islamic Jihad has rejected Hamas’s new policy of easing its stand on Israel and accepting the establishment of a Palestinian state limited to the 1967 borders. “As partners with our Hamas brothers in the struggle for liberation, we feel concern over the document” which the main Islamist movement that rules Gaza adopted on Monday, said Islamic Jihad’s deputy leader, Ziad Al-Nakhala. “We are opposed to Hamas’s acceptance of a state within the 1967 borders and we think this is a concession which damages our aims,” he said on Islamic Jihad’s website.
Nakhala said the new Hamas policy formally accepting the idea of a state in the territories occupied by Israel in the 1967 Six-Day War would “lead to deadlock and can only produce half-solutions”. Hamas has eased its stance on the Jewish state after having called for decades for its destruction, as the movement seeks to improve its international standing. Founded in the 1980s in the wake of the Islamic revolution in Iran, a close ally and source of its ideology, Islamic Jihad is the second force in the Gaza Strip and focused entirely on the armed struggle.
Meanwhile, Egypt reopened the Rafah border crossing with the Gaza Strip for three days started yesterday to allow hundreds of stranded Palestinians to return home, officials said. The move, described by Palestinian border officials as a “humanitarian” gesture, will allow Palestinians stranded in Egypt and elsewhere, including students and sick people, to return to Gaza. “Egyptian authorities reopened the Rafah crossing for three days only, from Saturday until Monday, and only in one direction to allow those stranded on the Egyptian side to return home,” a statement said.
The Gaza Strip has been under an Israeli blockade for a decade. Palestinian militants in Gaza have fought three wars with Israel since 2008. The Rafah crossing is Gaza’s only gateway to the outside world not controlled by Israel but it has remained largely closed in recent years because of tensions between Egypt and Gaza’s Islamist rulers Hamas. Relations between the two soured after then Egyptian army chief, now President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi overthrew his Islamist predecessor Mohamed Morsi in 2013. — Agencies