The United States plans to announce tens of millions of dollars in new aid for the West Bank and Gaza next week to ease the humanitarian crisis in the Palestinian territories, U.S. officials said on Friday.

The funds will be channeled through the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian refugees, which handles U.S. and other assistance for food, health, education and other areas, said U.S. officials, who declined to provide the exact figure as the official announcement will be made during a trip to the region next week.

Condoleezza Rice to discuss Gaza crisis with Olmert in Japan
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert will meet with U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice while both are in Japan next week. The meeting was requested by Rice. It is particularly surprising because Rice is due to come to Jerusalem for a working visit the following week.

Government officials predicted that the meeting would focus on the situation in the Gaza Strip, and said that Rice probably wanted to express her concern over the humanitarian situation there.

General William Fraser, the U.S. envoy responsible for monitoring implementation of the road map peace plan, visited Israel this week and met with officials in the Prime Minister's Office, the defense establishment and the Foreign Ministry. Fraser's job is to determine whether both sides are fulfilling their obligations under the road map's first stage, which includes evacuating illegal settlement outposts for Israel and fighting terror for the Palestinian Authority.

A government official said that on his next trip, Fraser would present a plan for how both sides should move forward on these obligations.

Haaretz has reported that the U.S. - like its fellow members of the Quartet, the EU, UN and Russia - is increasingly unhappy with Israel's policies in Gaza. Rice's deputy, David Welch, even told the last Quartet meeting that the U.S. "is not comfortable" with Israel's operations in Gaza.

Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni responded to these sentiments at two different diplomatic meetings Thursday, one with the Romanian foreign minister and one with the EU envoy for the peace process, Marc Otte.

"Europe must understand that Hamas is not an organization that is interested in setting up a Palestinian state," she told her Romanian counterpart. "It is not seeking rights for the Palestinians; it wants to deprive others of their rights."

"All indirect support for Hamas, even via discussions about opening the [border] crossings or about the humanitarian situation, only weakens those parties that are interested in reaching a [diplomatic] agreement," she said. "The Palestinian people has no future with Hamas, and Israel will continue to fight the terror that Hamas perpetrates."

At her meeting with Otte, Livni was even blunter. "Israel wants to advance the diplomatic process, but we cannot allow ourselves to close our eyes to the difficult reality of terror in Gaza," she said. "The international community's desire to see a change on the ground sometimes leads it to ignore the reality and is liable to [lead it to] push for compromises that those who live here cannot permit themselves. Europe ought to understand that it is either Hamas or the moderates."