Gaza - Egypt is to close its breached border with the Gaza Strip Sunday, in cooperation with Hamas, a senior leader of the Islamist movement said Saturday on his return from Cairo where talks on the future of the Rafah border crossing had been taking place. Mahmoud a-Zahar told reporters that the border would remain sealed "until all measures are finalized aiming at arranging the movement of exit and entrance" from the salient.
Hamas gunmen blew huge gaps in the border on January 23, temporarily ending an Israeli closure of the coastal salient.
Hundreds of thousands of Gazans poured through the now-porous border into Egypt to shop for items made scarce by an Israeli blockade of the enclave.
Egyptian attempts to reseal the border have been thwarted by Gaza militants. Hamas is angling to have a say in controlling the Rafah crossing, a move which would end the isolation imposed on the Strip after Hamas gunmen seized control of the salient last June when they routed forces loyal to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in five days of savage fighting.
Abbas, who has been at loggerhead with Hamas since the June takeover, opposes any role for it in a new deal governing the crossing point and wants to reactivate a 2005 deal under which Palestinian Authority forces ran the crossing with European Union monitors.
Hamas, for its part, says the 2005 deal is no longer valid. The crossing point has been closed since the internecine fighting in Gaza last June.
Earlier Saturday, a senior Hamas lawmaker said the movement will keep the breached border open in order to prevent the strip from being isolated, as it has been since June.
"We say we will not return to the era of the borders' sealing off and Gaza will not remain a closed prison," Yahia Moussa, head of Hamas' parliamentary bloc, said.
Moussa said that if talks in Cairo did not lead to the Rafah crossing point being made operational, then the border breaches would remain open "in a way making new facts on the grounds and bypassing the degrading deals."
Also Saturday, a senior Hamas negotiator said his movement could accept the return of EU monitors to the border crossing if they reside in Egypt or in Gaza.
At the same time, Mohammed Nasser said, Hamas officials negotiating the future of the crossing point told their Egyptian counterparts in Cairo, where the talks are being held, that the movement has reservations about the international agreement requiring the monitors to be present at the border point.
The Hamas delegation has not received clarifications on its reservations, Nasser said. The delegation is expected to return to Gaza on Saturday without holding talks with a Palestinian Authority delegation, which is also in Cairo negotiating the future of the border crossing.
