West Bank businessmen to rebuild Gaza Strip

By MOHAMMED MAR’I | ARAB NEWS
May 22, 2011

RAMALLAH: Some 100 businessmen from the West Bank will visit Gaza on Tuesday to push forward plans to reconstruct the coastal enclave which was damaged during the 2008-2009 Israeli military operation.

Osama Kohail, head of Palestinian Contractors’ Union, said the businessmen would arrive in Gaza on Tuesday to start consultations for reconstructing the damage.

The Gaza-based Al-Mezan Center for Human Rights said the Israeli offensive left about 500 families living in tents and destroyed or damaged 11,152 houses.

For its part, Amnesty International said at the time that more than 3,000 Palestinian homes and hundreds of other properties were destroyed during the fighting, and more than 20,000 structures were damaged. In addition to private homes, Israel destroyed factories, workshops, animal farms, orchards, government buildings, police stations and prisons, Amnesty said.

Kohail said that the businessmen would “sign agreements with their counterparts in Gaza Strip to ease the reconstruction efforts.”

The official said his union coordinated the initiative with the Hamas government.

Tens of donor countries pledged more than $4.4 billion to rebuild the war-torn territory at a conference held in Sharm El-Sheikh in March 2009, but little has happened on the ground up to now due to the Palestinian internal split.

As a result of the lack of materials, Gazans manufactured mud bricks in an attempt to overcome the Israeli restrictions.

The United Nations and human rights groups have voiced concern about the humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip and called on Israel to ease its blockade imposed on the coastal enclave following the abduction of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit in June 2006. Since the ousting of President Hosni Mubarak, Egypt lifted its part of the blockade.

Groups in Gaza have also focused on bringing in construction materials, such as cement and iron, which would be used to rebuild the damage caused by Israel’s three-week Gaza offensive last winter.

The "fight" between the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority (PA) in the West Bank and Hamas in Gaza over donations that should be allocated to rebuilding the Gaza Strip began after Israel halted its offensive. Control over reconstruction funds would put huge sums of aid money expected to flood in from abroad at Hamas’ fingertips and could also give the group a measure of international recognition.

The PA is urging all parties and others to look to it as the sole channel for administering the construction process. The Gaza-based Hamas government said is the legitimate channel "to any Arab or foreign body that wants to rebuild what has been destroyed by the Israeli occupation."

However, Fatah and Hamas signed a reconciliation agreement in Cairo earlier this month.

The two movements agreed to form a transitional government of neutral technocrats to rebuild the Gaza Strip and prepare parliamentary and presidential elections in a year.

Source: Arab News.
Link: http://arabnews.com/middleeast/article422307.ece.