Gaza’s Interior Ministry has said that some 17,000 Palestinians from Gaza urgently needed to cross into Egypt via the Rafah border crossing -- recently reclosed after a four-day opening -- for humanitarian reasons.

On Friday, ministry spokesman Iyad al-Bazem said more than 17,000 Palestinians needed to leave the strip for humanitarian reasons, noting that the Egyptian authorities had reclosed the crossing on Thursday after having opened it for an exceptional four-day period.

Since 2007, the Gaza Strip has groaned under a tight blockade imposed by Israel and Egypt that has deprived the coastal enclave’s almost two million inhabitants of basic commodities including food, fuel and medicine.

Except for rare exceptions, the Egyptian authorities have kept the Rafah crossing closed to passengers and commercial traffic.

According to al-Bazem, 3,000 Gazan humanitarian cases (out of an initial 20,000) were able to leave the Gaza Strip this week, while more than 3,000 Palestinians on the Egyptian side -- many of whom had been stranded there for more than two months -- were finally allowed back into the blockaded enclave.

Al-Bazem also noted that the Egyptian authorities had stopped 146 people from traversing the crossing.

The last time Egypt temporarily opened the crossing -- the strip’s only border crossing not under Israeli control -- was three months ago.

According to Gaza border official Khaled al-Shaer, the Egyptian authorities have told Gaza’s Hamas-run government that the crossing would be reopened again for three days in September to allow the Palestinian Muslims to perform the Hajj pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia.

Egypt has tightened its grip on the border with the blockaded Gaza Strip since mid-2013, when Mohamed Morsi -- the country’s first democratically-elected president -- was ousted and imprisoned in a military coup.

This year, the crossing -- Gaza’s only access to the outside world -- has been opened for a combined total of only 15 days.

Egyptian officials cite recent attacks on army and police personnel in the northern Sinai Peninsula when justifying Egypt’s closed-border policy.

International rights groups, meanwhile, continue to warn of a looming humanitarian catastrophe in the Gaza Strip if the Egyptian/Israeli blockade is left in place indefinitely.

PHOTO CAPTION

Palestinians wait for travel permits to cross into Egypt at the Rafah border crossing between Egypt and the southern Gaza Strip August 20, 2015.

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