February 04, 2008	Monday	Muharram 25, 1429

RAFAH: Seventy-year-old Naim Ahjazi needs just a half-hour — 45 minutes at most — to run across the border to Egypt and pick up the desperately-needed farm supplies that he paid for last week.

But the Hamas gunmen standing guard at the frontier are not moved — after nearly two weeks of unfettered access between Gaza and Egypt, the border is shut again.

“I paid for the supplies, but the shop was closed all day yesterday so I couldn’t pick them up,” says Ahjazi, his tanned face etched with despair and resignation as he looks over at the border just metres away.

“I told them that I just needed a half hour or 45 minutes to get the stuff that I paid for. But they said no because I don’t have an Egyptian ID.” So the nearly $100 worth of fertiliser and other farm supplies — a small fortune for a farmer in impoverished and isolated Gaza — remains on the other side of the frontier.

Egyptian and Hamas forces strung barbed wire and erected metal barriers across the last two gaps in the frontier, following a reported agreement on restoring order to the border that was transformed into a chaotic marketplace over the past 11 days.

Only people returning home were allowed over the border, but with hundreds still jostling to try to get across, the frontier areas dissolved into hectic scenes of pushing, shoving and yelling.

“Everyone needs to leave immediately! If you’re not Egyptian, you’ve got to leave now!” the armed Hamas men yelled at the crowd, every once in a while raising their batons to push the people back.

“The people knew we were going to close it,” one Hamas gunman said, declining to provide his name. “It has been open for almost two weeks and they have the same things on both sides of the border.” But like the hundreds milling at the frontier where nearly half of Gaza’s 1.5 million population has crossed since militants blew it open on Jan 23, Ahjazi refuses to leave, hoping against all odds that can cross just once more.

“If they just gave us 48 hours (warning), we could get everything we need and leave,” he says. “But they didn’t tell anyone they were closing it.” The border breach was an unfamiliar blast of freedom for Gazans — residents of one of the world’s most densely-populated places that has been the object of ever-increasing border restrictions from Israel since the start of the second Palestinian uprising in September 2000.

The Rafah crossing — Gaza’s only frontier that bypasses Israel — has been closed nearly continuously since militants seized an Israeli soldier in a deadly raid in June 2006. Palestinians queuing at the now-sealed gaps in the barrier were hoping it would open just one last time.

Unemployed Naim al-Borno, 38, lives a refugee camp in Gaza City. Over the past week or so, he crossed into Egypt buying goats to resell on the Gazan side for a profit of $20 to $30 a head.

“If they close the crossing for good, I’ll have to go live under a tree. There is nothing here, no work.”—AFP