Israel allows in only less than quarter of goods the Gaza Strip needs, a Palestinian official said Thursday following a call by a senior UN official to relax sanctions on the Hamas-controlled coastal enclave.
"Only 15 percent of Gaza's basic needs are allowed in through one crossing that operates on partial capacity," said Jamal El- Khodary, chief of a public anti-siege committee in Gaza.
During a tour at a shutdown factory in Gaza, El-Khodary told reporters that Gaza importers used to bring in whatever amounts of 4,000 items of goods and commodities. Today the merchants are allowed to import limited amounts of only 70 items.
"The banning of raw materials has disabled hundreds of factories and thousands of workers have gone jobless," El-Khodary added.
Israel imposed restrictions on shipping in and out of Gaza in June 2006 when Hamas captured an Israeli soldier in a cross-border raid. A year later, Israel heightened the restrictions to nearly total closure in response to Hamas' violent takeover of Gaza where 1.5 million people live.
El-Khodary noted that the lack of construction materials has blocked any large-scale rebuilding of thousands of houses, infrastructure and public institutions that were destroyed in Israel's military campaign on Gaza last winter.
On Tuesday, the UN Under-Secretary-General for humanitarian affairs coordinator, John Holmes, called for "a rapid end to this blockade and for genuine and a rapid opening of all the crossings for goods and people."
However, El-Khodary said the calls for lifting the siege "are meaningless as long as they are not accompanied by pressure on the (Israeli) occupation."
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