JAKARTA, 3 August 2007 — Israel’s siege of the Gaza Strip is pushing Palestinians toward starvation, a close aide of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said yesterday. Nabil Shaath, who is visiting Indonesia as a special envoy for Abbas, said Gaza needed humanitarian assistance and appealed to the international community to help end Israel’s siege.
“The (Indonesian) president expressed concerns for the grave situation of the Palestinians, particularly in Gaza as a result of the Israeli siege and a result of pushing the people toward starvation,” Shaath said after talks with Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.
Shaath told reporters that Yudhoyono expressed his full support for Palestinian unity and the nation’s struggle to end Israeli occupation. Gaza has been under the control of the Islamist movement Hamas since they routed fighters from Abbas’ Fatah faction in a brief civil war in June.
Crossings into Gaza from Israel and Egypt were closed to most traffic after the Hamas takeover of the enclave of 1.5 million people, resulting in shortages of food and other essentials.
But this week Israel began allowing Palestinians stranded in Egypt to return to Gaza via the Jewish state, in a deal agreed with Egypt and Abbas’ Western-backed government but criticized by Hamas.
Shaath said the division had weakened the Palestinian negotiating position and Abbas was doing everything possible to reunify Gaza and the West Bank politically.
“There’s a lot to be done to produce national unity and national reconciliation and end the situation that has happened in Gaza... We are going to work hard to achieve that reintegration as soon as possible,” he said.
“Gaza and the West Bank are forever the two wings of the small beleaguered Palestinian nation that cannot be separated,” he added. Abbas had suggested a new election to establish popular legitimacy in Palestinian territories but any vote must include Gaza, said Shaath.
The Palestinian president has said he will not talk to Hamas until they give up control of Gaza and said he planned to decree a change in electoral rules that might hamper Hamas chances of repeating their parliamentary election victory of last year.
Around 2,400 Palestinians out of 6,000 stranded in Egypt for weeks have made it back to Gaza since Israel started allowing them passage last week, a Palestinian security source told Agence France Presse in Cairo. About 800 Palestinians yesterday reached the Al-Oja (Nizana) cargo crossing on the Egypt-Israel border, south of the divided town of Rafah, the official said, the latest batch since the first Palestinians went home on Sunday.
The Palestinians had been trapped in and around the Egyptian town of El-Arish in north Sinai following the closing of the nearby Rafah terminal, Gaza’s only door to the outside world bypassing Israel, after the territory was taken over on June 15 by the Islamist Hamas movement. The fate of the remaining Palestinians, many of whom are Hamas supporters, remains in limbo.
Meanwhile, two Palestinians were killed outside a Gaza City mosque yesterday, as part of an increasingly violent confrontation between Hamas and smaller rival Islamic Jihad over the right to carry and use weapons in public.
Islamic Jihad said Hamas gunmen killed one of the men after being dragged out of the mosque, and that four other Islamic Jihad supporters were shot in the legs in the same incident. A second man was also killed, but it was not clear whether he was shot mistakenly.
Hamas’ de facto police force was not available for comment on the incident, but Hamas leaders tried to play down the growing friction with Islamic Jihad, which has several thousand gunmen. The recent clashes have proved embarrassing for the two groups, which ostensibly are close because of their Islamic fundamentalist ideology.
However, since Hamas seized control of Gaza, vanquishing forces loyal to the rival Fatah movement, it has been trying to establish itself as the only group with the right to carry and use arms. For example, Hamas’ militia, the Executive Force, has enforced a ban on shooting in the air during weddings.
The latest Hamas-Islamic Jihad friction erupted on Tuesday, when shots were fired in the air during the wedding of a couple with ties to Islamic Jihad. Hamas gunmen showed up, demanding that the shooting stop. The next day, the Executive Force raided homes of Islamic Jihad supporters, looking for weapons, according to Islamic Jihad.
In one such raid, Hamas gunmen fired a rocket at a house in Gaza City and traded fire with Islamic Jihad militants inside, wounding 10 people, hospital officials said. A Hamas gunman later died of his wounds, Hamas said. Gunfire could be heard for several hours.
