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Palestinian Foreign Minister Mahmoud Zahar will continue to bring money through Rafah crossing. (AP file)
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| By Israel Insider staff and partners June 18, 2006 |
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International sponsors of a stalled Mideast peace plan agreed Saturday to channel aid to cash-starved Palestinians for health care, utilities and social services, while continuing a boycott of the militant-led Palestinian government.
The United States went along with a compromise plan to send mostly European money through the World Bank for services and to pay stipends directly to poor people in the Palestinian territories.
Establishment of the fund is an acknowledgment that an international aid freeze imposed after the surprise election victory of Hamas militants in January has had unintended and harsh consequences for ordinary Palestinians.
The EU was considering an initial allocation of about $126 million (?99.6 million), spokeswoman Emma Udwin said. She said the EU wants to have the funding mechanism in place by early July. The United States is not expected to contribute.
An official of the Palestinians' Hamas-led government who returned from a seven-nation trip with $20 million in his luggage says he will continue to funnel money across the Egyptian border despite European objections.
The European monitoring mission has complained that the entry of money through the Rafah crossing violates a U.S.-brokered agreement giving Palestinians control over the entry point after Israel's withdrawal from the Gaza Strip last year.
But the Hamas government is nearly bankrupt from international financial sanctions over its refusal to renounce violence against Israel, and Foreign Minister Mahmoud Zahar promised to ignore European pressure and carry cash across the border into Gaza.
"We are going to continue to bring money in through Rafah crossing. This is a legal process. We are not going to allow anyone to prevent us," Zahar told reporters Saturday.
Zahar is one of two Cabinet ministers to cart in suitcases stuffed with cash in the past week to help the Palestinian administration, which has seen numerous protests and violent outbursts from its unpaid employees.
Speaking in English, Zahar also said a recent Iranian pledge of $50 million in cash, 300 cars and two aircraft would be delivered soon to the Palestinian government.
He praised the plan endorsed Friday by European Union leaders to channel humanitarian aid to the impoverished Palestinian areas through non-governmental groups, but he condemned their freeze on funding for the Hamas-led administration.
On other matters, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas vowed to continue a 16-month-old cease-fire with Israel and denied the Islamic militants of Hamas had ever broken it.
During the week, militants fired rockets into Israel after a June 9 explosion on a Gaza beach that killed eight civilians, most from the same family. Palestinians blamed Israel, which was shelling Gaza around that time but has said it was not responsible for the blast.
"Hamas did not break the truce, although some violations have happened, due to the killing of the family," Abbas told reporters in Cairo, Egypt, where he was meeting with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.
Three British newspapers -- the Guardian, Independent and Times -- published reports Saturday questioning the Israeli probe that absolved its military of involvement in the beach incident.
The Israeli army general who conducted the investigation, Maj. Gen. Meir Klifi, passionately defended his conclusions. He told Israel's Army Radio that he could unequivocally rule out it was an Israeli artillery shell that killed the Palestinian family.
"These are the facts. Whoever wants to argue with the facts, that is a completely different story," he said.
Abbas, speaking to reporters in Cairo, called for an international investigation into the blast.
Hamas has said it is ready to restore the February 2005 cease-fire, which greatly reduced Israeli-Palestinian violence that had killed thousands of people in the previous four years.
The intensification of fighting in recent days has complicated an already difficult situation for Hamas, which is under intense international pressure to moderate its policies and also is grappling with bloody infighting with the rival Fatah Party of Abbas.
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