by Reuters and Israel Hayom Staff
Egyptian attorney Wael Hamdy: "I filed the case because I was worried about the state of national security in my country after the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood to power and its unclear policies and links with Hamas."
A Palestinian works inside a
smuggling tunnel flooded by Egyptian forces, beneath the Egyptian-Gaza
border in Rafah, Feb. 19, 2013.
|
Photo credit: Reuters |
A Cairo court ruled on Tuesday that the
government must destroy all tunnels between Egypt and the Gaza Strip,
removing a route for smuggled weapons but also a lifeline for
Palestinians.
Egypt's ruling Muslim Brotherhood has close
ties with the Hamas Islamists who run the Gaza Strip, but many Egyptians
fear the enclave is a security risk for Egypt.
Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi's national
security adviser Essam Haddad said Egypt would not tolerate the two-way
flow of smuggled arms through the tunnels, which is destabilizing
Egypt's Sinai Peninsula.
Egyptian forces flooded some of the tunnels earlier this month.
"The court ruled to make it obligatory that
the government destroys the tunnels between Egypt and the Gaza Strip,"
Judge Farid Tanaghou said.
An estimated 30 percent of goods that reach
Gaza's 1.7 million Palestinian residents come through the tunnels,
circumventing a blockade imposed by Israel and Egypt for more than seven
years.
"I filed the case because I was worried about
the state of national security in my country after the rise of the
Muslim Brotherhood to power and its unclear policies and links with
Hamas," said Wael Hamdy, a lawyer who presented the case to the court.
He said the case was made after 16 Egyptian
border guards were killed last August by militants near the Gaza border.
The attack highlighted the lawlessness in the Sinai desert region
adjoining Israel and Gaza.
Cairo said some of the gunmen had entered Egypt through
the Gaza tunnels, an accusation denied by the Palestinians. Dozens of
tunnels have been destroyed since that incident, but, according to
Hamdy, 2,000 are still operational.
Reuters and Israel Hayom Staff
Source: http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_article.php?id=7789
Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.
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