ARI SHAPIRO, host:
This is Morning Edition from NPR News. I'm Ari Shapiro.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
And I'm Renee Montagne. Yesterday's three-hour ceasefire in the Gaza Strip allowed some badly wounded Palestinians to leave for medical treatment in neighboring Egypt. And some medical supplies and food were allowed into Gaza. But doctors who have gathered on the Egyptian side of the border are growing angry at being prevented from joining their colleagues in Gaza. NPR's Peter Kenyon reports.
PETER KENYON: After a slow day at the Rafiah border crossing Tuesday, Wednesday saw a flurry of activity with a line of aid trucks moving into the border area to load their goods onto waiting Palestinian trucks. Egyptian volunteers muscled large sacks of milk powder from the Ukraine onto the back of a vintage red Volvo truck already partially loaded with medical supplies and other goods. The ever-present whine of an Israeli unmanned aircraft was in the background until it was replaced by the boom of an air strike a few hundred yards away. The workers paused briefly to look at the smoke plume rising across the border, then returned to their loading. Palestinian truck driver Rha'ad Abu-Elwan(ph) climbs down and checks his load. He's from Rafiah - the Palestinian side of Rafiah that is just on the other side of the wall that separates Gaza from Egypt. When asked who is in charge at the other end of the border crossing, he shrugs and says two or three guys from Hamas check the trucks, and send them on to the hospital in Khan Yunis in the southern part of the strip. That's as far as he can go.
Mr. RHA'AD ABU-ELWAN (Truck Driver, Rafiah): (Through Translator) Everything else is closed. The beach road is also closed. The main road is closed, too. We only go to Khan Yunis.
KENYON: Officials are hoping that will change with Israel promising humanitarian corridors that won't be subject to attacks. But there have been no guarantees that these corridors will extend south to Rafiah, as well as north to the Gaza-Israel border. Outside the gate a crowd is growing, many of them wearing white medical coats. Dozens of doctors from Egypt, Jordan, Libya, Qatar, even Sudan and Iraq, have been waiting for permission to enter. But they say Egypt's state security service is refusing to let them go. Privately, some of the doctors say they think the problem is that some in the Arab Medical Union are allied with the Egyptian opposition, including the officially banned Muslim Brotherhood. Dr. Tiha Osman(ph) of Cairo's Ain Shams University made a passionate plea to put politics aside to do the right thing for badly wounded Palestinians.
Dr. KAHAN OSMAN (Ain Shams University, Cairo): (Through Translator) I swear to you, we are not on any political side. If the problem is from the Egyptian side, we beg you to let us in. If the problem is from the Israeli side, figure it out with them. In the name of humanity and all things charitable, I beg you. I beg you, let us treat the wounded. Let us do our jobs.
KENYON: Tuesday evening on a brief visit to the border crossing, Egyptian minister of health, Hatem el-Gabaly, deflected questions on letting the doctors in, saying it was Israel's fault.
Dr. Hatem el-Gabaly (Minister of Health, Egypt): (Through Translator) The latest information that I have is that on the other side of the border there are complications. We would let them go, but the problem is coming from the other side. From who exactly? I don't have that information, but I'm asking and following up.
KENYON: But the Arab doctors say that argument doesn't ring true, because two Norwegian doctors were granted permission to cross this border, and have spent the past week working at the main Shifa hospital in Gaza City. An official with the Norwegian NGO sponsoring the two doctors says the pair is trying to come back out of Gaza today. But even with the new talk of three-hour ceasefires and humanitarian corridors, it's not clear if that will be possible. Peter Kenyon, NPR News, at the Egypt-Gaza border.