Israeli Defense Officials: "The Palestinians Are Playing With Us" at Rafah Border Crossing

Israeli defense officials have criticized the Palestinians' work in the Rafah crossing. One of the problems was that online information about the people entering the crossing was not transferred to Israel, contrary to the agreement signed following Rice's pressure. At first, images of people entering from Egypt were only transferred 15 minutes later. In the past few days the delay was reduced to five minutes.

The more serious problem from Israel's point of view was, according to aides of Mofaz, "the feeling that the Palestinians are fooling us with the names and the details of the people entering." "We have information about al-Qaeda members and people from the black list of the Palestinian terror entering the crossing from Egypt to the Gaza Strip," Defense Ministry officials said. "In light of the feeling that the Palestinians are playing with us and are not meeting their commitments to the crossings agreement mediated by the secretary of state, we said that we plan to reexamine what is happening in the Karni and Erez crossings," the officials added.