At the Rafah crossing, a stream of injured Palestinians and an Arab dilemma

The wounded come, speckled with shrapnel, blistered by flame. The man in the sunglasses and untucked shirt puts them into ambulances bound for hospitals in northern Egypt. It’s been like this for days, bandaged Palestinians trickling out of the Gaza Strip.

This is a harsh land where the desert meets the sea and farming is a trick against nature and the elements. It is not easy terrain, not one for coddling, and perhaps that is why the Egyptian in the shades, Dr. Emad Eddin Kharboush, believes his country should permit only wounded Palestinians to cross its borders. Otherwise, he said, Israel will win in Gaza.

“We shouldn’t accept refugees. The Palestinians have to defend themselves or die,” said Kharboush, head of a network of 130 ambulances in the northern Sinai peninsula. “If we allow the Israelis to take Gaza, the problem remains.”

Smoke from the 11-day-old Israeli offensive against the militant group Hamas, which seized control of Gaza after a unity government with its factional rivals collapsed in 2007, curls above the Egyptian border. As Israeli planes and tanks continued to pound Hamas targets in Gaza, Egyptians in Cairo, 200 miles to the southwest, have been protesting the decision by President Hosni Mubarak’s government to keep most Gaza residents out. The gate at Rafah remains closed except to the injured who are ferried out in ambulances.

Kharboush’s support of his president’s policy speaks to the conundrum faced by Arab nations that have populations largely sympathetic to the Palestinians but either are powerless to stop the Israelis or choose for political reasons not to aid Gaza’s extremist leadership.

“We can’t send the Egyptian army to fight for the Palestinians,” said Kharboush. “We are doing all we can. Egypt is being unfairly blamed. You can’t expect me to fight for you, a Palestinian. I have no reason to go to war with Israel.”

The fate of the Palestinians is a history in which Arab kinship is often trumped by national interests.

No country understands this more acutely than Egypt. It fought several wars with Israel before signing an unpopular 1979 peace treaty with its long-standing enemy and emerging as a key power in the Arab-Israeli conflict. Cairo brokered the six-month cease-fire between Hamas and Israel that the Palestinian group let expire

Mubarak’s government is a U.S. ally that opposes Hamas’ Islamic radicalism. But geographically and psychologically, Egypt cannot escape the turmoil in the Palestinian enclave to its north.

One year ago this month, more than 250,000 Palestinians fled Israel’s blockade of Gaza by blowing holes through the Rafah fence and pouring into the Sinai. Many Egyptians greeted them warmly, but within days the Gazans, who spent millions of dollars stocking up on supplies, had worn out their welcome. Bedouin tribal leaders accused their guests of eyeing their women and stealing from their markets. The Egyptian military forced the Palestinians back into Gaza and reinforced the border’s walls and gates.

Those memories linger amid the Sinai’s dunes, thatched huts and campfires, where women wash beans in tin bowls and boys play soccer in the sand. There is also the realization here that Egypt, a country where more than 40% of the population lives on less than $2 a day, cannot absorb more despair.

“Egypt has done a lot for the Palestinians, but the Palestinians forget about all this in a minute,” said Mohammed Ayed, standing in a small grocery in Rafah.

His friend, Mosleh Sweilan, struggled to figure out the blurry boundaries between compassion and pragmatism.

“Egypt should not allow the Palestinians back in because there would be a lot of problems between them and the Bedouins,” said Sweilan, his face shadowed by a red-and-white kaffiyeh. “The Palestinians robbed the Bedouins. They stole cars and sheep. But the Palestinians’ dilemma is difficult. I believe Hamas is doing the right thing in standing up to Israel, but at the same time this war is happening because Hamas is in control. I’m really torn about it.”

Mahmoud Selmi sells construction supplies outside Rafah. Like Sweilan, he said that Hamas’ 2007 takeover of Gaza and its driving out of the more moderate Fatah party of Mahmoud Abbas damaged the Gazans politically and took pressure off Israel for negotiating a Palestinian state.

Selmi doesn’t want Palestinians surging back into the Sinai, but he said that nonetheless, Egypt should not abandon them.

“I believe we are not doing enough,” he said. “We should send them relief aid rather than allow them to return. If they come, they could cause us a lot of problems because some bad elements would sneak in with them and bring counterfeit currency and perpetuate terrorist operations across Egypt.”

If they come, the Palestinians would stream through Rafah and the Salaheddin crossing, where fresh contingents of Egyptian troops stand guard along barriers and barbed wire.

A row of ambulances waited at the border for the wounded. Kharboush ticked off a list of war injuries he had seen in recent days, but his sympathies were calculated. It is a time, he said, for toughness.

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jeffrey.fleishman@latimes.com

Noha El-Hennawy of The Times’ Cairo Bureau contributed to this report.