Environmental Affairs Minister Ze’ev Elkin said that Israel and Egypt share equal responsibility for the situation in the Gaza Strip whilst an official in Cairo deemed the coastal enclave exclusively “Israel’s problem.”
“As far as we are concerned, after Israel left Gaza, responsibility should not have been imposed on us,” Elkin told Ynet news site on Monday. “Egypt is no less responsible.”
“We left Gaza. If someone strikes at us from Gaza, they will get hit back. Let the Arab world resolve the internal, humanitarian problem of the Gaza Strip. Why should we bear responsibility for this?” he added.
Israel unilaterally disengaged from the strip in 2005 declaring a formal end to its military rule.
In 2006 Hamas won parliamentary elections but Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah and much of the international community refused to accept the result, leading to increased strife. A year later, Hamas violently seized control of Gaza. Since then two separate civil administrations emerged.
Humanitarian conditions in Gaza have steadily declined since and it’s economic state is dire. The enclave's approximately two million residents labor under restrictive Israeli and Egyptian blockades imposed since 2007 as well as daily blackouts and sky-high unemployment. Some have argued it is on the verge of collapse.
Palestinians in Gaza have for months been demonstrating against Israel's decade-long blockade of the territory and in support of their right to return to lands they fled or were driven from during the war surrounding the creation of Israel in 1948MAHMUD HAMS (AFP)
An Israeli official close to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu refused to state whether Elkin’s comments represented the views of the government.
There was no official response from Egypt. However, in a private comment to Reuters, one Egyptian official said: “We are willing to do what we can to calm down the situation in Gaza or work on Palestinian reconciliation but we will not take over from Israel in Gaza. It’s Israel’s problem.”
Egypt has long acted as a broker between the Hamas and its rival Fatah, which controls the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority that is in theory also supposed to govern Gaza. Recent reconciliation efforts between the two factions have repeatedly failed.
Elkin’s comments amid Egyptian and UN efforts to secure a long-term ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas aiming to end the current Gaza flare-up in violence that began on March 30.
The agreement, widely speculated on by a host of media source, is anticipated to include a number of phases.
According to Saudi-owned Asharq al-Awsat newspaper, the first stage would see Israel fully reopen the Kerem Shalom goods crossing and enlarge the Gaza Strip’s fishing zone on the condition that Hamas agrees to halt it’s launching attacks against Israel.
Earlier this month, in what appeared to be a coordinated effort in a bid to quell Hamas violence in the strip, both Israel and Egypt shuttered their respective crossings. On Wednesday, Israel's Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman went further and ordered an indefinite ban on fuel and gas entering Gaza through Kerem Shalom.
The second phase of the deal, as per the Friday Hadashot news report, related to forging a reconciliation agreement between Palestinian rival factions Hamas and Fatah. The deal would reportedly see the Palestinian Authority (PA) assume control of the strip under the auspices of Egypt.
The PA in return would resume its payment to government employees based in the Gaza Strip whose salaries have been suspended for months amid the ongoing feud
The third phase involved the implementation of long-promised humanitarian projects such as the building of a seaport in Egypt's neighboring Sinai region that would serve the Strip..
