By Jonathan Wright CAIRO, Dec 19 (Reuters) - Egypt said on Friday it had received no requests that it try to patch up the truce which it mediated this year between Israel and the Palestinian movement Hamas, which runs the Gaza Strip. The six-month truce ended on Friday, raising the prospect of fresh cross-border fighting between Israel and Gaza. Foreign Ministry spokesman Hossam Zaki said: "We have not so far been asked to exert (truce) efforts as we did in the past." Zaki also defended the Egyptian policy of restricting the movement of people and and goods across the Rafah border point, Gaza's only outlet which is not under full Israeli control. He said that to open the border fully, as demanded by many Egyptians including the main Islamist opposition group, would serve Israel's interests by giving the Israelis an excuse for washing their hands of the impoverished coastal strip. Israel maintains a blockade of Gaza on its side, arguing that it does not want Hamas to receive weapons and that the Gazans should stop firing rockets into Israel. "If we do open up and deal with the strip in a normal way, making Rafah the main crossing point for people and goods, that means the occupying power (Israel) can relinquish its responsibility and pass the burden on to Egypt," he said. This would also perpetuate the division between the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, where Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and the Fatah group hold sway, he added. Egypt, along with the United Nations, says the Gaza Strip remains occupied territory, even after Israeli withdrawal, because its airspace, territorial waters and most of its land borders remain under Israeli control. In the last 10 months the Egyptian government has allowed 20,000 Palestinians to cross the border at Rafah, mainly for humanitarian reasons, a Foreign Ministry statement said. But on most days the border is closed and Palestinians who want to cross have to argue that they are special cases. The Egyptian government says Hamas should let representatives of Abbas's Palestinian Authority resume their duties as border guards, as laid out in a 2005 agreement. But one Egyptian official, who asked not to be named, said Hamas had undermined Egyptian efforts to maintain the truce and to arrange a Palestinian national dialogue on reconciliation. "They (Hamas) led us to this situation. We were trying our best on both fronts -- the truce and the dialogue. But they messed up," the official added. If Egypt opened the border, Hamas would feel under no pressure to seek reconciliation with Fatah, he said. The Egyptian government's policy on Gaza is unpopular at home, especially with the opposition Muslim Brotherhood, which has historical and ideological links with Hamas. Police are holding about 240 members of the Brotherhood, many of them detained in recent raids which the Islamists say targeted those active in a campaign against the blockade. (Writing by Jonathan Wright; Editing by Samia Nakhoul)
Hamas militants patrol a street after a training drill near the border with the Gaza Strip December 19, 2008. Hamas on Thursday declared an end to a six-month-old Egyptian-brokered ceasefire with ...
