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Egypt Corrals Gazans

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The Washington Post

Published: January 25, 2008

RAFAH, Gaza Strip - Egyptian security forces began imposing control over the country's breached border with the Gaza Strip on Thursday, using clubs and dogs to police the thousands of Gazans still making their way past barricades blown up or toppled by Palestinian gunmen a day earlier.

Some Israeli officials said the breach would allow them to push responsibility for Gaza's 1.5 million residents onto Egypt, drawing immediate objections from Egypt.

"When Gaza is open to the other side, we lose responsibility for it," Israeli Deputy Defense Minister Matan Vilnai said in a statement, according to news agencies. "So we want to disconnect from it.

"We want to stop supplying electricity to them, stop supplying them with water and medicine, so it would come from another place," said Vilnai, a member of Israel's Labor Party, which has favored negotiations with Palestinians and the emergence of a Palestinian state in Gaza and the West Bank.
Defense Minister Ehud Barak distanced himself from Vilnai's comments, but some Israeli leaders have long imagined Egypt taking control of Gaza, and Jordan becoming responsible for Palestinians in the West Bank.

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