By SPA,
Ramallah, West Bank : Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad signed a deal with the World Bank on Monday to finance three projects in the Gaza Strip but said they could not go ahead until Israel had lifted its blockade.
The $29 million agreement covers an electric utility management project as well as water and wastewater projects in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, Reuters reported.
At a signing ceremony with David Craig, the World Bank’s director in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, Fayyad said “implementing the projects … requires lifting the siege imposed on the Gaza Strip (and) reopening the border crossings”.
Fayyad said around 40 percent of $7.7 million in aid pledged by international donors to the Palestinians at a conference in Paris last year was to have gone for projects in the Gaza Strip.