MICHELE NORRIS, host:
For the first time in months, the border between the Gaza Strip and Egypt is open. Busloads of people have been crossing in and out of Gaza and trucks of medical aid are heading into Gaza. The Egyptian border is the only border Gaza shares with a country other than Israel. And Israel has kept a tight blockade on Gaza ever since Hamas took control there more than two years ago.
NPR's Peter Kenyon traveled to the border today.
PETER KENYON: Egypt's border policy with Gaza is a source of deep frustration and anger in the Arab world, where Egypt is seen by many as not doing enough to help the Palestinians trapped in Gaza. Egypt maintains that it has treaty obligations to live up to, as well as protecting the integrity of its borders.
But for Gaza residents, such as 79-year-old Youssef Mohammed, the border policy is punishment by their Arab neighbor to the south. He came to Egypt to visit his children and had to wait five months until he could finally get back home to Gaza City today. Sitting in the front row of an idling Egyptian bus, he said there's no reason Egypt couldn't make this a routine crossing.
Mr. YOUSSEF MOHAMMED: (Through translator) They should just open the border. It's choking us. Look, we're married to Egyptians and Egyptians are married to Gazans. They should open it.
KENYON: Egyptian police thoroughly checked every passenger's documents, and one elderly woman is hustled off the bus, gesturing and complaining to no avail. She stands outside the tall black iron gates of the border, arguing with a guard who wants to see a travel document she doesn't have while the bus she was just ejected from goes through into the no man's land dividing Egypt from Gaza.
Unidentified Man: (Foreign language spoken)
KENYON: You're Egyptian, asked the guard?
Yes, says 64-year-old Zeinab Attiya, who got up at 3:00 this morning to travel from Helwan, south of Cairo, to the border.
Ms. ZEINAB ATTIYA: (Foreign language spoken)
KENYON: My three children and 11 grandchildren live over there in Gaza, she adds, and I haven't seen them in seven years.
These are the stories that so often go unheard amid the debate over the continuing though sporadic Palestinian rocket fire and Israeli military strikes, and concern about Hamas' efforts to re-arm via smuggling tunnels beneath the ground here.
Palestinian and Egyptian families joined by intermarriage remain divided; parents don't see their children grow up and may never know their grandchildren. And the Palestinian and Egyptian sides of Rafah, sundered by walls, military patrols and Israeli drones, is on one side brutally impoverished, and on the other plagued by a rising criminal class that has grown out of the booming smuggling operations here.
When help does arrive for Gaza, it often takes the form of well-meaning international activists who bring in truckloads of aid, which is rarely followed by any sustained effort to lift the blockade.
The leaders of the Viva Palestina convoy completed their journey from Britain to the Gaza border today after a number of setbacks, chiefly Egypt's refusal to permit the trucks to travel overland across the Sinai Peninsula. The group's most well-known member, the outspoken Scottish member of the British Parliament, George Galloway, was diplomatic upon his arrival here, thanking Egypt for eventually permitting more than 200 truckloads of aid into Gaza.
Galloway was also realistic enough to point out that the attention generated by this type of humanitarian activism is only really useful if it generates pressure on political leaders to spend more time and effort solving the underlying problem.
Mr. GEORGE GALLOWAY (Member of Parliament, Great Britain): But these convoys, whilst important for a whole number of reasons, are not a substitute for lifting the siege on Gaza. No amount of convoys can be more than a drop in the ocean of troubles, which the people of Gaza are suffering.
KENYON: But with no apparent progress toward a permanent lifting of the siege of Gaza, Palestinians say they're afraid the best they can hope for is more brief border openings from Egypt; not a sigh of relief but the hiss of a safety valve.
Peter Kenyon, NPR News, near the Egyptian-Gaza border.