RAFAH, Gaza Strip — Egyptian border guards wielding clubs and electric prods directed throngs of Palestinians as they crossed into Egypt for a second day Thursday, but made little attempt to block the flow from Gaza.
Still, Egyptian officials warned the Gazans’ brief bliss of freedom, shopping and visiting relatives will soon come to an end with the resealing of the border.
For the second day in a row, scenes of frenzy, chaos and joy played out at the Gaza-Egypt border. Guards channeled crowds through a handful of openings, where Palestinians pushed, shouted, and jostled their way into Egypt, braving a gauntlet of cows, camels, fertilizer, food and truckloads of cement.
In what looked like a first step toward restoring a border, Egyptian security forces turned back Palestinians who attempted to travel deeper into Egypt — though they did nothing to stem the flow of Egyptian goods making their way to the frontier region to replenish rapidly depleting stocks.
Dozens of Hamas militants dressed in black stood on the Gaza side of the border, in front of the fallen wall, checking people’s bags and packages for weapons, drugs and other prohibited items as they re-entered Gaza.
As the presence of Egyptian and Hamas security forces grew, so did the crowds, as Gazans sought to stock up on basic supplies before Egypt made good on its word to reseal the frontier.
By all accounts, this week’s breaching of the Gaza-Egypt border has provided a significant popularity boost to Gaza’s Hamas rulers, who can claim they successfully broke through the internationally supported Israeli closure that has deprived the coastal strip of normal trade and commerce for nearly two years.
Egypt has not yet indicated how it plans to reseal the border, though it began positioning armored vehicles Thursday along sections of the breached, seven-mile frontier.
“The border will go back as normal,” said Egyptian Foreign Ministry spokesman Hossam Zaki. “The current situation is only an exception and for temporary reasons.”
Hamas has used the breach — carefully planned, with militants weakening the metal wall with blow torches about a month before blowing it up with a series of blasts — to push its demand for reopening the border passages, this time with Hamas involvement. Such an arrangement would in effect end the international sanctions against the Islamic militants.
However, Egypt would likely be reluctant to have an open border with a territory ruled by Islamic militants — despite the fact that Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak has been under intense public pressure at home in recent days to alleviate the suffering of Gazans under blockade.
Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns, who visited Israel on Thursday, said that while Hamas was to blame for Gaza’s shortages, it was up to Egypt to restore order at the frontier.
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