Hamas criticises Abbas' demand for reintroduction of 2005 border agreement

The Islamic Resistance Movement has criticised the demand made by the Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas for Egypt to reactivate the 2005 Crossings Agreement at the Rafah border.

Hamas spokesman Sami Abu-Suhri pointed out that Abbas’s demand for the agreement to be back in force is essentially a demand for the Israelis to control the Gaza border again.

“The Rafah crossing was working smoothly before it was closed recently by the Egyptians”, he pointed out. “There were no administration or security problems.” He called for the government in Cairo to reopen the crossing.

The Palestinian Authority signed the 2005 Crossings Agreement with the Israelis. The agreement included the conditions and specifications for how the Rafah crossing had to operate. One of the conditions was the presence of international observers along with a live video feed to the Israelis so that they could block anyone from leaving or entering the Gaza Strip.

Unless otherwise stated in the article above, this work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. If the image(s) bear our credit, this license also applies to them. What does that mean? For other permissions, please contact us.