Abbas calls for international force in Gaza Ramallah, West Bank (ANTARA News) - Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas called on Tuesday for an international force in the Gaza Strip, which is now controlled by the rival Hamas movement. "We have insisted on the necessity of deploying an international force in the Gaza Strip to guarantee the delivery of humanitarian aid and to allow citizens to enter and leave freely," Abbas said at a joint news conference in Ramallah after talks with visiting Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi. Abbas noted the estimated 4,000 Palestinians who have been blocked at the Rafah crossing terminal on the Egyptian border, shut for nearly a month since the Hamas takeover, 11 of whom are reported to have died in the deteriorating humanitarian conditions.
Prodi said deploying an international force would require the agreement of all the parties involved and that the question "has not yet been examined in detail," according to the Arabic translation of his remarks. Abbas`s call threatened to further widen the yawning Palestinian chasm, as Hamas has warned that it would not accept any foreign troops in Gaza and would treat them as an occupying power. The chief of Hamas`s parliamentary bloc, Salah al-Bardawil, reaffirmed the position on Tuesday.
"We will not accept the presence of an international force," he was quoted by AFP as saying during a press conference in Gaza. "The arrival of such a force would be a flagrant intervention in Palestinian affairs and a new occupation that we totally reject," he said, accusing Abbas of "allying himself with foreigners against Hamas." The United States gave a lukewarm response to Abbas` call.
"The focus should be on building up functioning, capable, responsible Palestinian security forces that are capable of functioning" in Gaza and the Israeli-occupied West Bank, said State Department spokesman Sean McCormack. "I`m not sure that you`re going to find too many forces willing to go into what I expect is a non-permissive environment," McCormack said, adding that Abbas` proposal would have to be studied. "I`m not sure it`s gotten a lot of traction at this point.
But look, if serious people come up with ideas and they float them, of course we`ll take a look at them," he added. Militants from Islamist Hamas overran forces loyal to the moderate Abbas in Gaza on June 15, effectively splitting the Palestinians into two entities, with the president controlling the occupied West Bank and Hamas running Gaza. Following the Gaza takeover by a group whose charter calls for the destruction of the Jewish state, Israel closed off the overcrowded territory, except for limited humanitarian aid.
The closure has sparked warnings of a humanitarian crisis in the territory, one of the most densely populated places on earth, and where more than 80 percent of the 1.5 million residents depend on aid. Abbas again ruled out any dialogue with the Hamas "putschists.
" Prodi offered full support to Abbas and the emergency government, headed by Western-backed premier and respected economist Salam Fayyad, which the president appointed after firing the Hamas-led cabinet in the wake of the Islamists` takeover. "The efforts of president Abbas and Fayyad should be firmly supported," Prodi said. "They have to be able to show to their people that there exists a ray of hope.
" Offering Palestinians humanitarian aid "is not enough," he said. "We have to create investments, facilitate the movement of people and goods so that the economic situation improves." Prodi, who met with Israeli officials on Monday, was on his first visit to Israel and the Palestinian territories since assuming power in 2006.
He also visited Dheisheh Palestinian refugee camp in the West Bank near Bethlehem, but as his plane was about to leave late Tuesday, presents he had received there were confiscated, Israeli public television reported. It said an official boarded his aircraft at Tel Aviv`s Ben Gurion airport and removed the gifts because they had not been examined by Israeli security. The presents would be turned over to the Italian consulate in Tel Aviv and then forwarded to Italy by diplomatic bag once they had been cleared, it added.
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