Palestinian Hajj pilgrims want safe return

More than 2,000 Palestinian Hajj pilgrims were stuck on boats off Egypt's Red Sea port of Nuweiba on Saturday after refusing to return to Gaza strip via the borders controlled by Zionist forces, an Egyptian police source said.

"Some 2,250 Palestinian pilgrims are stranded on two ferryboats off Nuweiba" after sailing on Friday from Jordan's Red Sea port of Aqaba, the source told AFP.

The pilgrims have refused demands by the Egyptian authorities "to pledge in writing" that they would agree to return to Gaza via a Zionist settled border crossing, the source said.

Earlier a Jordanian Foreign Ministry official said in Amman that around 2,000 Palestinian pilgrims sailed on two boats from Aqaba to Nuweiba on Friday night after being promised they could re-enter Gaza through the Rafah crossing which bypasses the Zionist settled areas of the 1948 occupied Palestine.

"The Foreign Ministry contacted the Egyptian authorities and secured permission for the Palestinian pilgrims to go back to Gaza via Rafah," Jordan's state-run Petra news agency quoted the official as saying.

According to Petra, the pilgrims refused to go back to Gaza through the Zionist-controlled Kerem Salem crossing because they don't feel safe and secure.

The Spokesman for the Gaza-based Palestinian government (Hamas) told a press conference in Gaza, "The pilgrims have confirmed that they refuse to return except through the Rafah crossing which they left from."

"They do not want to face harassment from 'Israeli' security, given that so many of our people have faced harassment and arrests while passing through the crossings that are under direct 'Israeli' control," Sami Abu Zuhri.

Abu Zuhri urged Egypt to allow the pilgrims to return to Gaza through Rafah, warning that any alternative would be a cave-in to American and Zionist pressure.

Hundreds of Gazans, including family members of the pilgrims, gathered meanwhile near the Rafah crossing demanding that Egypt allow the pilgrims to return.