Israel said that it wanted to wash its hands completely of the Gaza Strip yesterday, as the flow of hundreds of thousands of impoverished Palestinians across the breached border with Egypt showed no sign of letting up.

Israel also advised its citizens to avoid visiting popular tourist destinations in the Sinai desert, which abuts Gaza. It said that it had received specific threats that Palestinian militants now operating in Egypt were planning to abduct Israelis.

Matan Vilnai, the Israeli Deputy Defence Minister, tried to salvage something from the collapse of the wall, which clearly had taken Israel by surprise and given an unparalleled propaganda coup to its sworn enemy Hamas, the Islamist rulers of Gaza.

Mr Vilnai said that the destruction of the wall was an opportunity for Israel to “disconnect” from Gaza and push it into Egypt’s unwilling lap. “We need to understand that when Gaza is open to the other side we lose responsibility for it,” he said. “We want to stop supplying electricity to them, stop supplying them with water and medicine, so that it would come from another place.”

Blockade drains life from Gaza

The movement of goods into Gaza had been intermittent at best since Hamas won Palestinian elections early last year

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BACKGROUND

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Nicholas Burns, the US Undersecretary of State, said during a visit to Tel Aviv that restoring order on the chaotic border was Egypt’s responsibility. Egypt, which has shown little willingness to tackle the tidal wave of desperate humanity across its frontier, said that it had not been approached about any change in the status of Gaza, a potentially explosive issue for the Arab state. It has strained diplomatic ties with Israel and receives huge subsidies from the United States. Both view the Hamas Government of Gaza as a terrorist organisation. Egypt also loathes Hamas because the Islamists enjoy close ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, a powerful opposition group that Egypt has tried to suppress for years.

“The border will go back as normal,” said Hossam Zaki, an Egyptian Foreign Ministry spokesman. That may, however, not be so simple — Hamas is demanding that it be a central player in any future agreement on the border, putting Egypt and the more moderate Palestinian Government in Ramallah, which nominally governs all Palestinians, in a diplomatically awkward spot. Mushir al-Masri, a Hamas MP, said that the Islamist movement had received no response from Egypt to its demand for three-way talks but that Hamas would keep pushing the issue.

“We have to procure a solution with the Egyptian authorities,” he said.

A Hamas militant on security duty at the smashed border wall said that his men would be able to seal the border crossing again if Egypt agreed to open permanently the official crossing point, closed since last summer’s violent takeover of Gaza by the Islamists.

The Rafah crossing was jammed with tens of thousands of hopeful Gazans pushing into Egypt to shop for goods that have disappeared in their own towns since Israel tightened its blockade in response to Hamas rocket attacks. The United Nations said that 700,000 Gazans — almost half the population of the Strip — had made the return trip into Egypt in less than two days since the wall was blown up. Yesterday Egyptian police banned the use of donkey carts to ease congestion. But when they briefly tried to close the clogged crossing, they faced a huge, angry throng of Gazans.

The frantic crowds have now solidified into a steady stream of people buying up food, detergents, cement — long banned by Israel — and petrol. Egyptian shopkeepers who had sold out the day before had restocked overnight to make the most of the bonanza, selling everything from cattle to Viagra.

— Two Palestinians infiltrated a religious seminary in the West Bank settlement of Kfar Etzion last night and attacked students before being shot dead, police said. The attackers, who were said to be disguised as Israeli soldiers, stabbed three students before they were killed by security guards. The wounded were taken to a hospital for treatment.

Palestinian gunmen also opened fire at Israelis outside the Shuafat refugee camp on the outskirts of Jerusalem, killing a border police officer and seriously wounding a woman officer. (AP)

Many masters

— Until the 13th century BC, when the Philistines captured Gaza, the area was known as Canaan and was ruled by an Egyptian governor

— Gaza became a Muslim city in AD635 when it was captured by the Arabs. It was invaded by Christian Crusaders in the 1100s, and recaptured by Muslims in 1187

— The French controlled Gaza for ten years from 1799. After Napoleon’s visit', Gaza City’s palace, now a school, was named “Napoleon’s Castle”

— British forces drove the Ottoman Turks from the area during the First World War and ruled Gaza for ten years

— After Israel’s 1948 declaration of independence and the Arab-Israeli War, the Gaza Strip came under Egyptian control

— The Six-Day War in 1967 brought the Strip under Israeli occupation, along with the Sinai Peninsula, West Bank, and Golan Heights

— Israeli settlements were dismantled in 2005 and Hamas gained control of Gaza last year

Sources: www.ipc.gov.ps; Art and History Museum, Geneva; Times archives

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