By Xinhua
Ramallah : Acting Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad claimed Wednesday his government had a plan to run the border crossings either between the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip and Israel or between the Strip and Egypt.
Fayyad’s office said in a statement that Fayyad is holding international contacts at international and local levels in order to exert pressure on Israel to allow the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) to take control of the Strip’s crossings.
Fayyad, a pro-West economist who became interim prime minister in June after President Mahmoud Abbas sacked Ismail Haneya of Hamas, assured that the PNA is ready to run the crossings transparently and efficiently in terms of administrative, financial and security issues.
Fayyad’s initiative, which has to win an Israeli approval, includes that the PNA takes control of the crossings in the Gaza Strip, which has been ruled by Hamas since mid-June after Hamas men overran Abbas’ security forces.
According to the statement, the international Quartet expressed support over Fayyad’s initiative during the donor countries’ conference in Paris on Dec. 17.
The Israeli authorities has imposed a tightened closure against the Strip by keeping all border crossings in the coastal enclave closed since June after Hamas took control of the Strip.
The Israeli closure and siege has dealt a huge blow to the Strip’s economy and greatly reduced people’s living conditions in the Strip, which heavily depends on outside aid inflow of almost everything, from basic foodstuffs to medicine.
On Fayyad’s initiative, the deposed Hamas government said it would deal with any initiative aiming at helping to end the closure of Gaza borders crossings and terminals.
Hamas spokesman in Gaza Fawzi Barhoum said his movement would be ready to deal with any initiative with regards to the management of the crossings “in order to ease the suffering of Palestinian people and break the siege imposed on them.”
Barhoum said Hamas “has not received any initiatives, (and) we heard about that initiative in media reports only.”
However, he stressed on the urgent necessity to reopen the crossings in the Gaza Strip so as to enable people to move in and out of the Strip easily, and to bring to an end the suffering of those stranded at the Rafah crossing on Gaza-Egypt borders.