Egypt

NOVANEWS By Dr Daud Abdullah Throughout the whole of 2015 the Rafah Crossing between the Gaza Strip and Egypt was open for just 21 days. On 31 December, the Egyptian authorities opened the border to deliver the corpse of a 28 year-old mentally-ill Palestinian, Ishaq Khalil Hassan, who was shot in full view of the cameras after he had strayed into Egyptian waters while swimming in the Mediterranean. As the Israeli-led — and Egyptian-backed — blockade of Gaza enters its tenth year, there is little hope that the Rafah Crossing will be opened for any meaningful number of days in 2016. In fact, a combination of domestic and external factors are likely to continue to prevent an early end to the siege. The cold-blooded killing of Hassan by the Egyptian army in late December was indicative of a ...

NOVANEWS Palestine Information Center  The former Palestinian ambassador Adli Sadeq denied Monday PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas’s statements in which he said that Egypt’s ousted president Mohammed Morsi had offered some 1,000 square kilometers of Sinai to expand the Gaza Strip. In a Facebook statement, the former Palestinian ambassador to India said that Abbas had made a political mistake when he said that Morsi offered him a land from Sinai. Cairo knows very well each word said by Morsi, and it is not in need for Abbas’s statements, Adli wrote in his Facebook page. “Why didn’t he [Abbas] reveal such a story during Morsi’s mandate and why didn’t he play the role of the Egyptian soil’s protector at that time?” Abbas has made such statements in this particular time because he knows that Morsi i...