US President Barack Obama urged the Israeli government to loosen its blockade of Gaza on Wednesday, as the US continued to scramble to find a way out of the stalemate in the Middle East and address the outcry over Israel’s deadly raid on a Gaza-bound flotilla last week.
Obama, meeting with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas at the White House, also promised a US$400 million aid package for the West Bank and Gaza, though only about US$70 million represented a new commitment. White House officials said the money would be spent on housing, schools, efforts to provide access to drinking water and other health and infrastructure projects.
Gaza has faced an Israeli and Egyptian blockade since 2007. An Israeli raid that thwarted a Turkish-led flotilla carrying aid and activists toward Gaza last week intensified international protests over the blockade, which Obama has called “unsustainable.”
PHOTO: EPA
Israel contends that the blockade is necessary to prevent the smuggling of arms to Hamas, the militant Islamist organization that governs Gaza and opposes Israel’s existence.
Administration officials and their European allies have been pressing the Israeli government to partly lift the blockade to allow a freer flow of nonmilitary goods.
“We, and I think President Abbas agrees with this, recognize that Israel should not have missiles flying out of Gaza into its territories,” Obama said on Wednesday. “And so there should be a means by which we are able to stop the flow of arms that could endanger Israel’s security.”
“At the same time,” he said, “we’re doing so in a way that allows the people in Gaza to live out their aspirations and their dreams both for themselves and their children. And that’s something that we’re going to spend a lot of time focusing on, and we’ve already begun some hardheaded discussions with the Israelis in achieving that.”
International organizations working in Gaza have warned of growing hardship. Deprived of raw materials, local industry has been severely damaged, and the Gaza economy has collapsed.
Meanwhile, Israel will not lift its blockade of the Gaza Strip unless the Islamist Hamas movement allows the Red Cross to visit an Israeli soldier captured in 2006, its foreign minister said yesterday.
“We must say clearly that the minimal condition for lifting the blockade is for the Red Cross to be allowed to regularly visit Gilad Shalit,” Avigdor Lieberman said in a statement, referring to the 23-year-old conscript.
“As long as this condition is not fulfilled, there is no reason to change the situation,” he added.
Hamas swiftly rejected the remarks, calling Israel’s linking of Shalit’s fate to the blockade “an attempt to mislead and cover up international efforts to break the siege.”
Israel took a first step on Wednesday to temper the uproar caused by its flotilla raid by allowing in potato chips, cookies, spices and other previously banned food items into the Gaza Strip.
But the things Gazans need most — cement, steel and other materials to rebuild their war-ravaged territory — are still mostly banned, and critics, including the UN, denounced the move as insignificant.
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