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Thu 01 Jan 2008Palestinians break Gaza siege as border wall with Egypt
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Above the crowd of thousands floated a red mattress, still wrapped in plastic. Underneath, holding aloft their new purchase, Kayad Shalafa and his brother Said were returning through the sand dunes of northern Egypt.
They walked back over the trampled barbed wire, past the placid Egyptian soldiers and on to the blackened hole in the concrete border wall they had walked through that morning from Gaza. "I'm getting married in a month," said Shalafa (30), a civil servant from Gaza city. "There's a siege in Gaza, an occupation. Even mattresses are expensive there. What else can I do?"
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