GAZA CITY -- Hamas on Friday accused Cairo of planning to bar a number of the movement's leaders from crossing into Egypt on their way to the annual pilgrimage to Mecca in Saudi Arabia.
"A senior Egyptian official informed a Hamas official in Gaza about a list of Hamas leaders who are to be banned from travelling, including Salah Bardawil, Sami Abu Zuhri and myself, without explaining why," said Fawzi Barhum, a spokesman for Gaza's Hamas rulers.
Barhum said the decision was politically motivated and "unjustified."
Gazans wanting to take part in next month's hajj pilgrimage have to cross via the Rafah border crossing with Egypt before travelling on to Islam's holiest cities of Mecca and Medina in western Saudi Arabia.
But Egyptian security sources denied any such ban was in place, telling AFP that Hamas leaders had yet to request permits to travel via Egypt, despite an official request for a list of names.
| There's the rub, the list of names, and the necessity of printing new ID cards for each man ... |
Last month, a top Hamas security official was arrested on arrival at Cairo airport and held for nearly two weeks, in an incident which ramped up tensions between Egypt and the Islamist rulers of Israeli-blockaded Gaza.
Cairo has blamed Hamas for the failure of Egyptian mediation efforts to reconcile the Islamist group with the secular Fatah party of Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas. It has also implied Hamas was linked to a deadly rocket attack on Israel and Jordan in August launched by militants in Egypt's Sinai peninsula.
| They launched missiles against Jordan from the Sinai? |
| Not quite. We had the reports here at Rantburg at the time, because the missiles were aimed at Israel, but missed. Twice. (Yes, Palestinian artillery is so bad they actually miss the country they're aiming for, never mind hitting the broadside of a barn.) |
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