"This blockade ... must be lifted and must be broken and the Arab League decision is very clear in this regard," Moussa said. "Not only the Arabs, but the entire world should stand with the Palestinian people against the siege of Gaza and what is happening in the occupied territories, especially East Jerusalem," he said, referring to Jewish settlement growth in the annexed Arab half of the city.
Egypt had kept its Gaza border largely closed, bolstering Israel's embargo, since Hamas, which won a 2006 election, seized sole control of the Gaza Strip in a war with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah faction three years ago.
But Cairo reopened its Rafah crossing with the enclave after Israeli marines killed nine pro-Palestinian activists in a May 31 raid on a Turkish-flagged aid vessel.
Palestinian and Arab League officials said Moussa's visit was also aimed at giving momentum to reconciliation talks between Hamas and Fatah that Egypt has sponsored but which have failed to remove deep mistrust between the two rivals. "Reconciliation is the basic and principle question. It is a question of will and not a mere signature — it's a will, it's a policy, it's a position that translates into an agreement on all issues," Moussa told reporters. "History does not halt before a sentence here or a paragraph there."
In an apparent bid to avoid any impression of Arab League recognition of Hamas' Gaza takeover, Moussa met Ismail Haniyeh, head of the Hamas government, in his home rather than in his office.
"We see this visit as a practical step along the way toward breaking the siege," Haniyeh, with Moussa at his side, told reporters after their hour-long meeting.
Moussa toured some of the areas most devastated by Israel's December 2008 assault on Gaza, in which some 1,400 Palestinians were killed and thousands of homes were destroyed or seriously damaged.
Amid an international outcry over the bloodshed in the flotilla raid, Israel has faced mounting pressure to ease or lift a blockade critics have described as collective punishment.
Gaza's 1.5 million inhabitants have been under the crippling blockade since June 2006 after Palestinians captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit in a cross-border raid. The blockade was tightened a year later after Hamas seized control of the enclave, with Israel and Egypt sealing the territory off from all but basic humanitarian aid and strictly limiting travel in and out.
