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.
Radio France Internationale, 18 July 2010
“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.
“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.
