Israel Will Allow Humanitarian Aid Into Gaza, Livni Tells EU

[Mrs. Sharon B. Hodge]

Israel Will Allow Humanitarian Aid Into Gaza, Livni Tells EU
by James Neuger



Jan. 22 (Bloomberg) -- Israel vowed to ease its economic siege of the Gaza Strip and allow badly needed supplies of food and medicine into the Palestinian enclave after three weeks of fighting.

Bowing to appeals from the European Union, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni said Israel won’t block humanitarian shipments for Gaza to alleviate suffering from the military campaign against Hamas. Israel withdrew the last of its troops from the Gaza Strip yesterday after declaring a cease-fire early Jan. 18.

“The crossings are open for humanitarian needs,” Livni told a press conference after meeting EU foreign ministers in Brussels late yesterday. “We are willing to cooperate on this as far as needed.”

Israeli troops began pulling out on Jan. 18, ending a land, sea and air offensive aimed at halting the shelling of Israeli cities by Hamas, the militant Palestinian group that controls the Gaza Strip.

Israel declared a unilateral cease-fire over the weekend after Egypt, the U.S. and European countries offered to help crack down on arms smuggling to Gaza. Hamas then called a truce of its own.

“The smuggling of weapons needs to be stopped,” said Livni, a candidate for prime minister in Israeli elections to be held Feb. 10.

Smugglers hauled fuel and cigarettes into Gaza yesterday, using tunnels under the Egyptian border that survived Israel’s offensive.

Open the Border

“They will dig tunnels out of desperation and there will be no way of stopping all these tunnels if you don’t open up the border,” Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt said to reporters as he headed into the meeting.

Hamas took control of Gaza in 2007, breaking with the Palestinian Fatah faction that runs the West Bank and seeks peace with Israel. The EU and U.S. classify Hamas, which refuses to recognize Israel’s right to exist, as a terrorist group.

EU officials expressed confidence that President Barack Obama will make Middle East peacemaking a priority. EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana welcomed an Agence France-Presse report that Obama has asked former Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell, broker of the 1998 peace deal in Northern Ireland, to be an envoy to the region,

Selecting Mitchell is “good news,” Solana said at the press conference. “He’s going to do a very good job.”

Death Toll

The fighting left more than 1,300 Palestinians dead. Gaza’s economy suffered $1.9 billion in damage and lost output, the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics said. Aid groups warned of a humanitarian emergency in Gaza, home to about 1.5 million people in an area of 360 square kilometers (144 square miles).

The European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, provided 73 million euros ($95 million) in humanitarian aid for the Palestinian territories last year, more than half of it for Gaza.

Four Israelis were killed by rockets and nine soldiers died in combat.

The cease-fire is “extremely fragile,” German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said to reporters. “We have to make every effort to turn the current truce into a lasting armistice.”

To contact the reporter on this story: James G. Neuger in Brussels at [e-mail]