More than 100 Palestinians stranded for weeks in Egypt after the Hamas takeover of Gaza began returning home Sunday, crossing into Israel and riding buses to a crossing point between Israel and northern Gaza, according to AP. The first three Palestinians crossed into Gaza through the Erez checkpoint late Sunday afternoon. The violent Hamas takeover of the Gaza Strip last month triggered the closure of the Rafah border crossing with Egypt, which was run by Palestinian security with European supervision and Israeli security in the background _ stranding about 6,000 Palestinians on the Egyptian side. During the violence, the European monitors fled and Hamas militiamen took control of the terminal. Earlier Sunday, about 1,000 Palestinians gathered in a stadium in the Egyptian town of el-Arish, where authorities read the names of 105 people who they said were approved by Israel to return to Gaza.
