Egypt Opens Rafah Border Crossing With Gaza Strip for 3 Days - Reports

MOSCOW (Sputnik) — The Egyptian authorities have decided to open the Rafah border crossing with the Gaza Strip for three days in order to solve the humanitarian issues of the strip's residents, the Al-Masry Al-Youm media outlet reported on Saturday citing its own source.

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According to the source, the Egyptian authorities have provided those willing to cross the border with necessary vehicles.

Egypt's opening of the Rafah border check comes as a friendly move in the wake of an agreement reached between Fatah and Hamas, which ends the division between the rival Palestinian organizations. Fatah and Hamas have been at loggerheads for a decade, with the former controlling much of the West Bank and the latter ruling the roost in the Gaza strip. Hamas is far more militant than Fatah and is associated with Islamist organizations like the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt while Fatah, which was led until his death by Yasser Arafat, has always been a secular group.

For the first time in a decade Gaza's crossing with Egypt was opened under the control of the Palestine Authority and not Hamas that previously siezed control of Gaza by force, provoking an Israeli-Egyptian blockade that seriously limited the movement of Gaza's 2 million inhabitants.