US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was meeting Israeli leaders on Tuesday on her first official visit to the Middle East, pledging “aggressive diplomacy” to revive the hobbled peace process.
But her hosts are hoping to focus her attention on Iran, which Israeli leaders consider the key threat to the Jewish state.
Clinton met Israeli President Shimon Peres and was due to hold talks later with outgoing Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert as well as Benjamin Netanyahu, the right-winger charged with forming the next government.
PHOTO: AP
Clinton arrived in Israel from Egypt, where she outlined her Middle East strategy at a conference on the reconstruction of the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip following Israel’s devastating three-week war in December and January.
“The US is prepared to engage in aggressive diplomacy with all sides in pursuit of a comprehensive settlement that brings peace and security to Israel and its Arab neighbors,” she said at a press conference.
She pledged more than US$900 million to the Palestinians, out of a total of US$5.2 million promised by international donors at the conference in the Red Sea resort of Sharm El-Sheikh and in earlier commitments.
“Our response to today’s crisis in Gaza cannot be separated from our broader efforts to achieve a comprehensive peace,” she said at the aid forum. “By providing humanitarian assistance to Gaza, we also aim to foster conditions in which a Palestinian state can be fully realized.”
Clinton urged all parties to work towards a lasting truce in Gaza, and condemned continuing rocket attacks on Israel.
As the world’s top diplomats pledged billion of dollars for Gaza in Egypt on Monday, ordinary people in the territory said they would rather have open borders than handouts.
Even some tunnel smugglers who profit from Gaza’s blockaded borders say they’d rather import legally through open crossings than risk Israeli bombing raids and shaft collapses.
“I want a ceasefire and open borders. Crossings are better than tunnels,” 22-year-old smuggler Abu Mahmoud said.
In Gaza City, car parts dealer Nayef Masharawi, 60, said the blockade has been bad for business. He said a gallon of Egyptian motor oil bought from tunnel smugglers costs nearly twice as much as the superior product he used to import from Israel.
The elderly shopkeeper said he had fond memories of the 1970s, when he would drive from Gaza City to his Mercedes supplier in the Israeli port city of Haifa without borders or checkpoints.
However, housewife Sulafa Ayyad said she was hoping to claim compensation for damage to her two-story home in Gaza City’s Zeitoun neighborhood. The house, built with savings from her husband Ibrahim’s years as a laborer in Israel, was hit by bullets and shrapnel.
Ayyad, 33, said that so far, the family has received only US$200 from a neighborhood welfare committee.
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