Exerpted from the Washington Post
JERUSALEM, Nov. 25 -- Palestinians celebrated a step toward independence from Israel on Friday with a jubilant ceremony opening the Rafah border crossing between the Gaza Strip and Egypt, their first self-governed passage to the outside world.
The event marked a milestone in the long Palestinian-Israeli conflict by giving a Palestinian government control over an international border crossing for the first time. The opening is the most tangible benefit the Palestinian Authority has gained since Israel's withdrawal from Gaza a little over two months ago, an evacuation that ended a 38-year Israeli presence in the strip but left its borders under Israel's control.
Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas, who stands to benefit politically from Rafah's opening, told roughly 1,200 Palestinians, European diplomats and Egyptian officials who will help monitor the border that the measure of autonomy was "a dream that has come true for us." But he said the opening was a modest step and pledged further progress toward the creation of a Palestinian state alongside Israel that would include the more populous West Bank.
The Rafah crossing has tremendous social importance for the 1.3 million Palestinians in Gaza, many of whom have family on the far side of the heavily fortified frontier that Israel had patrolled since occupying the strip in the 1967 Middle East war.
Before its evacuation of 8,500 Jewish settlers and the soldiers who protected them, Israel regulated traffic through Rafah. But the crossing was frequently closed for long periods, disrupting people's lives and sometimes leaving Palestinians on the wrong side of the border for weeks at a time.
Under the Rafah agreement, a team from the European Union will monitor people using the crossing from a control room at the site. Israeli officials, meanwhile, will be allowed to watch people crossing on a live video feed at a terminal several miles away. But for the first time Israeli officials will not be allowed a veto over who is allowed in or out of the strip, a right they sought during weeks of talks. Egyptian officials will control passage on the other side.
The ceremony Friday was a symbolic opening. Abbas, who said that "the magic key that can give us everything is security," became the first Palestinian to have his passport symbolically stamped after touring the once-shabby Rafah terminal, which had been painted for the event. The crossing, draped Friday with a banner declaring "Crossing to Freedom," opens Saturday to general Palestinian traffic.
The radical Palestinian group has claimed credit for Israel's unilateral withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, saying its attacks on Israeli soldiers and civilians by suicide bombers forced the evacuation. Hamas -- whose leader in Gaza, Mahmoud Zahar, attended Friday's ceremony -- has yet to recognize Israel's right to exist.