With the southern Gaza Strip crossing of Rafah still closed, Palestinian pilgrims fear a repeat of the August tragedy, when up to 3,000 Palestinians were left stranded on the Egyptian side of the main checkpoint because of a 17-day Israeli closure.

“There is no hope on the horizon that Israel would open the Rafah crossing soon and allow pilgrims to travel to Saudi Arabia,” Abdullah Janeed, a 40-year-old pilgrim from Gaza City, told IslamOnline.net Wednesday, December 29.

“We feel a lot of anxiety about our hajj and pray that [Egyptian and International] contacts with Israeli occupation authorities would pay off.”

But his fellow Gazan Mohammad Shaban has cautious optimism about the opening of the crossing.

“I’m sure that Israel would not dare to ban Palestinian pilgrims from performing hajj because it will create a scandal,” he told IOL.

Atef Awad, an employee at a pilgrimage operator in Gaza, says his company receives a torrent of phone calls day in and day out from edgy pilgrims to make sure that the spiritual journey has not been cancelled.

The Israeli closure came hard on the heels of two successive Palestinian operations earlier in the month, when resistance fighters bombed an Israeli military base near the crossing and a tunnel, killing five Israeli soldiers and injuring at least 13 others.

Palestinian pilgrims are supposed to start flying out of the occupied Palestinian territories to Saudi Arabia on January 3.

Saudi Arabia decided this year to increase the number of Palestinian pilgrims to 10,000 people, including 4,250 from the Gaza Strip and 5,750 from the West Bank in addition to 4,500 living inside what is now Israel, according to a statement released by the Palestinian ministry of Waqfs (religious endowments).

Salem Dardouna, director of Rafah crossing, said that Israel was mulling allowing Palestinian pilgrims to travel through the Beit Hanun checkpoint, which links the Gaza Strip and the Palestinian territories occupied in 1948.

“The pilgrims will then be ferried from Al-Karama crossing, which links the West Bank and Jordan, to Saudi Arabia,” he told IOL.

“This will add to the sufferings of the Palestinians and burden them financially. The Rafah crossing is indeed the aqua-lung of the Gaza Strip and we will reject any Israeli alternative.”

He said Palestinian officials will ask the Egyptians, the US and the EU to pressure the Israelis.

In November 2003, Israeli occupation forces denied tens of Palestinian youths, women and elderly from traveling to Makkah to perform Umrah (Lesser Pilgrimage) during the holy fasting month of Ramadan.

Israeli occupation authorities in 2002 prevented all Palestinians under 35 from leaving for the pilgrimage.

Up to 50 Israeli military checkpoints across the occupied Palestinian territories represent a terrifying nightmare for thousands of Palestinians.