PA ministers arrive in Gaza to kickstart reconstruction

GAZA CITY — Around 50 Palestinian unity government officials, including eight ministers, arrived in Gaza Monday to kickstart reconstruction of the territory devastated by a 50-day war with Israel, officials told AFP.

The unity government was the fruit of an April reconciliation deal between the Islamist Hamas movement and the Fatah organization of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.

But Abbas has repeatedly complained that Hamas has prevented it asserting its authority in Gaza, where the Islamists have been dominant since ousting Fatah loyalists in 2007.

Monday’s visit is only the second by ministers since the government’s formation in June.

Government spokesman Ihab Bseiso told AFP the trip would last several days and was aimed at launching “the actual start of reconstruction” in Gaza.

Israel’s 50-day war with Hamas in July and August this year killed nearly 2,100 Palestinians and 72 on the Israeli side. Israel says half of the Palestinian dead were fighters, and points to Hamas’s practice of embedding rocket launchers among civilians as part of the reason for Gaza’s high casualty rate.

Israel launched Operation Protective Edge on July 8 to stop Hamas and other groups’ indiscriminate rocket fire on Israeli cities and to destroy the terror tunnels that infiltrate into Israeli territory.

The Palestinian government says rebuilding the battered, Hamas-controlled territory, which has experienced three wars in just six years, will cost around $4 billion. Hamas is avowedly committed to the destruction of Israel.

The eight ministers who are travelling to Gaza from the West Bank town of Ramallah are the ministers of health, education, social affairs and local government, and the heads of the water, power and environment agencies, who have ministerial rank.

A spate of bombings last month targeting the property of Fatah officials in Gaza prompted Palestinian Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah to cancel a scheduled visit.