RAMALLAH, West Bank: US envoy George Mitchell said yesterday that opening the Gaza Strip to commercial goods would help to choke off the smuggling that Israel opposes.
But he said the Palestinian Authority of President Mahmoud Abbas must help to supervise the crossings, a demand that has been a major sticking point in Egyptian-brokered negotiations with the Gaza Strip’s Hamas rulers for a long-term cease-fire.
“To be successful in preventing the illicit traffic of arms into Gaza, there must be a mechanism to allow the flow of legal goods, and that should be with the participation of the Palestinian Authority,” Mitchell said after meeting Abbas.
Abbas’ Palestinian Authority holds sway only in the West Bank after Hamas wrested control of the Gaza Strip from Fatah in fighting in 2007.
Rocket attacks from Gaza and Israeli airstrikes over the past two days have threatened to undermine Mitchell’s efforts to consolidate a fragile truce between Israel and Hamas that went into effect Jan. 18, ending 22 days of fighting.
Palestinians fired a rocket from Gaza into Israel late Wednesday and another yesterday. No one was hurt. Israeli aircraft fired missiles in the southern Gaza Strip, attacking a metal workshop and a motorcycle, wounding two Hamas fighters and 16 passersby, including children, medics said.
With general elections in Israel scheduled to take place Feb. 10, politicians vied with each other in ratcheting up the rhetoric. Opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu, who tops opinion polls, saw more violence ahead. “It’s clear Hamas is rearming. Of course it’s attacking us. Of course it’s trying us,” Netanyahu told Israel Radio. “The next government will have no choice but to finish the work.”
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told Mitchell on Wednesday that Israel would not reopen any Gaza crossings, except for aid shipments, until an Israeli soldier captured in 2006 was freed, an Israeli official said.
The United Nations launched an emergency appeal yesterday for $613 million to help Palestinians recover from Israel’s war on Gaza.
Donations will enable the UN and other aid organizations to jump into action, meeting critical needs for food, clean water, shelter, medicine and restoration of basic services, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said.
“Help is indeed needed urgently,” he told reporters at the World Economic Forum in Switzerland.
Ban, the first world leader to enter Gaza since an Israeli blockade of the territory in June 2007, said the failure to act quickly will lead to even greater humanitarian calamity among the 1.5 million civilians.
“More than one-third of the 6,600 deaths and injured were children and women,” Ban said. “As a father of three I was especially troubled by the suffering and trauma that so many families went through.”
The UN Relief and Works Agency said aid shipments are hitting bottlenecks on Gaza’s borders with Israel and Egypt. The crossings have been tightly controlled or closed since June 2007.
