Israel to try to alleviate Palestinian crisis
Israel, pressured by international alarm over a brewing Palestinian humanitarian crisis, has agreed to release millions of pounds in funds it has withheld from the Palestinians and is considering easing restrictions on the transport of goods between Israel and the Gaza Strip.
Israel stopped transferring some €43.1m in tax and customs revenues it collects monthly on behalf of the Palestinians after the Hamas-dominated parliament was sworn in three months ago.
The withholding of those funds, coupled with a cut-off in desperately needed aid from the US and European Union, has left the Hamas-led government broke and unable to pay salaries for the past two months to workers who provide for about one third of the people in the West Bank and Gaza.
People’s savings are rapidly dwindling, merchants are forced to buy and sell on credit, petrol stations have no fuel to pump and schoolteachers have started striking for back wages.
International aid workers and government officials say the Palestinian healthcare system is verging on disaster, and that sanitation and sewage systems are liable to crash if money is not found soon.
International Middle East negotiators, worried by the reports, agreed at a meeting on Tuesday in New York to release humanitarian aid to the Palestinians and to set up a special fund to administer the transfer.
Israel worries that easing the pressure on Hamas, which is sworn to Israel’s destruction, would be counterproductive to Western efforts to force it to renounce violence and recognise Israel’s right to exist.
But with the West softening its stance, Israel followed suit. Yesterday, Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni told Channel 10 TV that Israel, too, was willing to have withheld tax and customs revenues used “for humanitarian needs such as medicines and health needs”.
Livni said Israel would not agree to use the funds to pay salaries of Palestinian government employees. Officials said the sums of money, and when it would be released, must still be decided.
Separately, talks to resolve the Palestinian fuel shortage were under way today with the sole provider of fuel to the Palestinians, Israel’s Dor Energy, and Israeli authorities, said Mujahid Salame, head of the Palestinian fuel authority.
Filling stations dried up after Dor suspended deliveries to the Palestinians earlier this week because of unpaid bills. Speaking to Voice of Palestine radio, Salame said he expected an agreement soon.
Israel’s dovish defence minister, meanwhile, is considering easing restrictions on the passage of goods between Israel and Gaza, in keeping with a call from the international mediators at the meeting on Tuesday.
Israel has kept the main Karni cargo crossing closed for much of the year. The Israeli military cites security concerns, but Palestinians say they are being penalised for electing Hamas as their rulers.
Because the closures have choked off the flow of goods, compounding the misery caused by the economic boycott, Defence Minister Amir Peretz is considering showing greater flexibility at Karni, security officials said.
The matter was expected to be on the agenda late today when Peretz presides for the first time over a weekly session of top security officials. At that meeting, Peretz will hear their reasoning for opposing Israeli negotiations with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas of the Fatah party.
Abbas is eager to resume long-stalled talks, and Peretz thinks Israel should start negotiating with him.
But the Israeli military, like Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, believes the Palestinian government should be treated as a single entity. Olmert says negotiations should not resume with Abbas unless Hamas accepts Israel’s demand for recognition and a renunciation of violence.
Because of Hamas’ refusal to bend to Israel’s demands, Olmert is expected to proceed unilaterally with his plan to pull tens of thousands of Jewish settlers out of heavily populated Palestinian areas while fortifying major settlement blocs and holding on to the West Bank’s Jordan River Valley.
The Yediot Ahronot newspaper reported today that Olmert was considering carrying out the pullback in phases, because of the large numbers of Jewish settlers who are to be uprooted.
Last year’s withdrawal from Gaza and four small West Bank settlements was completed within a week, but in that operation 9,000 settlers were evacuated and resettled.
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