Palestinians asserted control for the first time over an international frontier yesterday as hundreds of Gazans moved across a newly opened terminal at Rafah into neighbouring Egypt.

Travellers exchanged embraces and some flashed 'V' for victory signs, happy to be freer to travel and to be processed by Palestinian police rather than Israeli soldiers who occupied the Gaza Strip for 38 years before they withdrew in September.

Hundreds of Palestinians, some who had slept there for days, crowded the grounds where buses took them in groups of about 60 to the terminal. Dozens also poured in from Egypt back to Gaza. About 20 European police monitors were on hand, standing or sitting with the Palestinian officials under a deal brokered by US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to reopen Gaza and provide a crucial lifeline to its people and economy.

The Rafah crossing had been largely shut since Israel's exit from coastal Gaza, due to Israeli security concerns.

Pietro Pistolese, who heads the European Union monitors, said because the terminal was running smoothly, it would be open for five hours on today, up from four hours yesterday. The crossing is due to open full time only after all 70 European Union inspectors arrive, probably by mid-December. The Rafah deployment marks the EU's first monitoring role in the Palestinian territories.

European and Palestinian officials said they hoped to process upwards of 400 people a day. Though that meant an extra wait for some of 2,000 Palestinians who packed the terminal grounds, most travellers there were all smiles. During years of Israeli occupation, passengers would have to queue for hours as Israeli security personnel searched their belongings and questioned them.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas formally opened the terminal on Friday by cutting a ribbon and saying: "I think every Palestinian now has his passport ready in his pocket. Let them come to cross at this terminal whenever they want."

The US-brokered agreement on Rafah also outlines a plan to later permit Gazans to travel to the West Bank, occupied by Israel since a 1967 Middle East War, both territories where Palestinians seek a state under a US-backed peace "road map".

Hopes for renewed peace talks have been on hold as Israel heads to an early national election in March, after a crisis fuelled by rightist furore over the removal of Jewish settlements from Gaza, land they see as a crucial part of biblical Israel.

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