Days of Palestine, Gaza Strip -Israeli occupation authorities formally halted cement entry to Gaza Strip, which has been under Israeli siege for ten years, Palestinian official said on Sunday.
Head of the Palestinian Commission to Coordinate the Entry of Goods into the Gaza Strip Raed Fattouh said that the Israeli occupation authorities had “officially and completely” halted all cement quantities imported by private sector.
“The Israeli authorities informed us of their decision to stop all cement deliveries to Gaza as of Sunday, without providing any reason for the move,” Fattouh said.
Fattouh; however, said that the decision did not apply to limited quantities of cement supplied to projects being carried out in Gaza by the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA).
A couple of days ago, the Israeli media quoted Israeli officials as saying that Hamas, the Palestinian Resistance Movement, which has been ruling the Gaza Strip since 2007, had been was routinely appropriating cement for its own purposes.
Economic ministry in Gaza denounced the decision, warning that this would likely have negative repercussions on the reconstruction of the war-battered Strip, which is still recovering from a devastating 2014 Israeli military onslaught.
The ministry added that the amounts of cement currently entering Gaza had failed to meet the minimum requirements of the Strip’s roughly 2 million inhabitants.
Gaza has undergone four devastating Israeli offensives since 2007, when Hamas took control of the Gaza Strip after suppressing security chaos made by the Palestinian Authority and rival Fatah as they refused to accept results of free elections that brought Hamas to power.
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