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End Gaza ban

Posted on: Mon November 08, 2010

OCCUPIED-AL-QUDS: German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle on Sunday urged Israel to lift export restrictions against the Gaza Strip, on the eve of a visit to the impoverished Hamas-run Palestinian territory.

After talks with his Israeli counterpart Avigdor Lieberman, Westerwelle said the Palestinians needed improved economic prospects if peace talks were to stand a chance.     

 We want to strengthen moderate Palestinian forces, and to do that we need better economic development, he told reporters.     

 That is why I called for exports from the Gaza Strip to be permitted and made concrete proposals to my counterpart, Westerwelle added without elaborating.     

Westerwelle, who is also Germany s vice chancellor, is on Monday to visit Gaza which is controlled by the Islamist movement Hamas.     

He is to meet business leaders and representatives of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, visit a school and inaugurate construction on a badly needed sewage treatment plant, for which Germany is providing 20 million euros (28 million dollars) in funding. He will not meet Hamas officials.     

Lieberman said Israel was not convinced of any international demand for exports from Gaza.     

I m not sure that there is place on the market, he said, despite what he called a successful programme for strawberry and flower exports to the Netherlands.     

But in what Westerwelle called a breakthrough, Lieberman said he expected progress within two or three weeks on the practical concerns holding up the construction of the Gaza sewage plant, near the Israeli border.     

In early July, Israel gave the go-ahead for the international community to import construction materials into the Gaza Strip provided it supervises the projects for which they are used.     

The move followed intense international pressure after a deadly Israeli raid in May on a fleet of aid ships bound for Gaza.     

A blanket ban on importing building materials had stifled reconstruction in the Gaza Strip since Israel s devastating 22-day offensive, which ended in January 2009.     

Although almost all civilian goods are now allowed into the territory, where most of the 1. 5-million population relies on foreign aid, Israel s new regulations do not allow exports from Gaza.     

On the floundering peace process, Westerwelle said the region could not afford gridlock and renewed a European call for Israel to halt settlement construction in the occupied West Bank.     

US President Barack Obama relaunched direct negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians at the start of September.     

But they ran aground just three weeks later, with Abbas refusing to attend talks unless Israel renewed a moratorium on settlement building.     

Meanwhile, clashes broke out in the southern Bedouin city of Rahat early on Sunday as Israeli police demolished a mosque in a pre-dawn raid, police and witnesses said.     

Local residents said thousands of police and border police drove into the southern desert city overnight and set up roadblocks to prevent people from reaching the mosque.     

Clashes broke out as those living near the mosque poured out of their houses to prevent the demolition, and police fired tear-gas and rubber bullets, a spokesman for the local branch of the Islamic Movement told AFP.     

 They went into the mosque and arrested those who were praying inside, including me, and drove us outside the city until the operation was over, said Yusuf Abu Jamer.

Abu Jamer said the mosque, one of the biggest in Rahat that had been built to try to combat drug dealing in the area.

Courtesy : The News