Open Gaza crossings, says EU envoy

EU foreign affairs chief Catherine Ashton waves to a Palestinian boy during her visit to a concrete factory in Gaza, 18 July

Photo: Reuters

By RFI

The European Union on Sunday called for a further easing of Israel’s blockade on the Gaza Strip. During a visit to the territory Catherine Ashton, the EU’s high representative for foreign affairs, said Israel must open the Gaza crossings. She said that the EU was willing to send monitors to operate the crossings.

“The answer here is opening the crossings,” Ashton told reporters at a press conference held at a UN-run school for Palestinian refugees.

“People here recognise and understand the security needs of Israel,” she said. “But that should not prevent the ability to be able to see the free flow of goods into and out of Gaza in order that houses can be rebuilt, children can go fully functioning schools and businesses can flourish.”

It was Ashton’s first visit to Gaza since the Israeli seizure of a Gaza-bound aid flotilla at the end of May.

She proposed using EU monitors to help run the Gaza crossings, but added that they would have to have a clear role and work alongside the Western-backed Palestinian Authority, which Hamas drove out of Gaza in 2007.

Middle East analyst Fawaz Gerges

Gaza is suffocating

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18/07/2010 by Sarah Elzas

“This is a new position, it’s a radically different position than before,” Fawaz Gerges, a Middle East analyst told RFI.

“The Israeli blockade - by sea, by land - has taken a tremendous human toll, the economic situation in Gaza is very dismal,” he says.

At the height of the international uproar following the Israeli raid on the flotilla, the Jewish state said it would begin allowing civilian goods into the Gaza Strip.

The EU welcomed the changes but has pushed for freer travel and the export of goods produced in the territory.

Palestinian prime minister Salam Fayyad said on Saturday that the volume of traffic at the moment is “75 per cent less than what we had in the first half of 2007”.

“The economy of Gaza cannot be sustained only by importation. There needs to be exports,” Fayyad said during a joint press conference with Ashton.

As part of her three day trip Ashton will raise the EU’s concerns with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and US envoy George Mitchell.

However Gerges believes that further discussions on other aspects of peace talks must involve Hamas to have any credibility.

“I think the next step if the blockade is lifted, is to find ways and means to engage Hamas,” he says. “Hamas is the dominant social and political force in Gaza. You cannot basically deal with Gaza without finding a way to deal with Hamas.”

Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas has insisted that Israel must make progress on the issues of final borders and security before direct talks.

The blockade on Gaza began in 2006 following the capture of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit.