Israel Pledges To Lift Gaza Blockade
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GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip — Israel has pledged to resume limited shipments of food and fuel into the Gaza Strip following a meeting between the Palestinian Authority president, Mahmoud Abbas, and Prime Minister Olmert.
The move comes days after militant organization Hamas forced open the Gaza Strip’s border with Egypt, giving the strip’s 1.5 million residents respite from an Israeli blockade that left store shelves largely bare and gas stations empty, and just ahead of a Supreme Court petition against the blockade brought by Israeli human-rights groups.
“Both sides agreed to allow humanitarian aid to continue into the Gaza Strip,” a spokesman for Mr. Olmert, David Baker, said after the meeting. A Foreign Ministry spokesman said fuel shipments for the power plant and an unspecified number of trucks of humanitarian aid would be allowed in.
After four days of near-unfettered access to Egypt from Gaza, Egyptian troops stopped cars from crossing yesterday and set up a security cordon around the Egyptian side of Rafah, which straddles the border, to prevent Palestinian Arabs from traveling further into Sinai.
Still, Gazans continued crossing on foot and, with Rafah’s shops now nearly empty, an impromptu market of Egyptian vendors in Gaza City’s main Palestine Square did brisk business selling shoes, bicycles, cigarettes, and cans of gas.
Egypt is under heavy pressure from Israel and America to reseal its border, and President Mubarak of Egypt has invited both Mr. Abbas and Hamas representatives to Cairo for separate meetings this week. Mr. Abbas has proposed allowing Palestinian Authority forces, which ran the Rafah border with the help of E.U. monitors before they were ousted in a violent Hamas takeover in June, to return to the Strip to run the border crossings. The move, while excluding Hamas, would tacitly recognize the group’s administration of Gaza, a first for the Palestinian president.
A Palestinian Cabinet minister, Riad al-Malki, said yesterday the Egyptians have already accepted that proposal, which was also put to Mr. Olmert.
But Hamas, which has enjoyed a swell of popularity for its forcible opening of the border, wants a role in running the Rafah crossing alongside the Palestinian Authority.
