On Gaza's borders, anxiety mounts

At an Egyptian police checkpoint on the road to the border, an officer who did not give his name, voiced similar concerns.

"The Palestinians cause all the problems here. We are worried about [Hamas] because they are the reason of all the problems between the Palestinians now and all the problems are coming here. Especially we don't like the Hamas movement."

But Ibrahim Awad was more sympathetic to the Islamic movement. Mr. Awad has two small shops next to the Salahideen border crossing, a long-closed link with the Gaza Strip. He says that a bystander near the border was injured by a bullet from a Hamas militant this week.

"Just a day ago someone was just sitting here, and he was shot, but it wasn't on purpose," says Awad. "Anything that happens there, it affects here. Here and there is one country. It affects work and trade, also safety, everything."

Residents here feel strong ties with the Palestinians living just a few hundred yards away and many say they support Hamas in its fight with Fatah for control of the Palestinian territories.

Abdel Razaq Abdel Hamid grew up in a house facing the border with Gaza. From his roof he can see young Palestinians trying to clamor across the border and buildings in Gaza pocked marked from bombs he says were dropped by Israel.

"Hamas and only Hamas. They are the only ones who can bring security," he says when asked which Palestinian faction he supports. His brother next to him on his rooftop, overlooking the border, nods. "It's just one family between Egypt and Palestine."

Border security since Hamas won control of Gaza has rested mainly with the Egyptians. Fatah border guards fled to Egypt when Hamas won control of Gaza and Hamas has turned up at the border only sporadically so far, local residents say, and have been strafed by Israeli planes.

That has led to some 100 young Palestinian men slipping across to Egypt in the past few days, Awad, Mr. Hamid, and other local residents say.

Three border crossing point connect Egypt and Gaza. Only Rafah still opens sporadically and is heavily guarded.

The other two crossings closed a few years ago and aren't as heavily guarded. The one by Awad's shops was guarded by a single stick-wielding Egyptian soldier on a recent afternoon.

A guard tower and a half dozen soldiers milling about were the only visible human deterrent to illegal crossings from Gaza for the several kilometers of border within in view of the old crossing.

Egyptians living along this border said Palestinians blow holes through the massive metal wall that marks the Gaza Strip's border. Then they scramble across a few hundred yards of no man's land and use wire cutters to breach a fence topped with barbed wired that demarcates Egyptian territory.

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