Liberman: Gaza crossing to reopen Tuesday if calm holds

Israel will fully reopen the main crossing for goods into the Gaza Strip on Tuesday if the current calm in the territory holds over the next two days, Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman announced on Sunday during a visit there.

“Yesterday was one of the calmest days, perhaps, since March 30,” Liberman said. “If that situation continues today and tomorrow as it was yesterday, then on Tuesday we will revive the regular procedures and also expand the fishing zone to what it was before.”

The defense minister made his comments at the Kerem Shalom Crossing, the only Israeli crossing for commercial goods into and out of the Gaza Strip, which has been closed to everything but shipments of food, medicine and occasionally fuel since July 9.

Lieberman stressed that calm also meant an end to months of kites and balloons carrying firebombs over the border fence from the Palestinian enclave to burn Israeli farming land.

According to the Haaretz newspaper, the plan to offer these economic incentives was proposed by the Israel Defense Forces’ top brass, who had also recommended the closure of Kerem Shalom in the first place.

“Residents of the Gaza Strip need to understand that so long as there are incendiary balloons and fires on our side, their side will also not go back to normal and to routine,” Liberman said.

The defense minister visited the site with the director-general of the Defense Ministry, Maj. Gen. (res.) Udi Adam and Israel’s military liaison to the Palestinians, Maj. Gen. Kamil Abu Rokon.

“The key to all this is quiet, calm, zero incendiary balloons, zero clashes on the fence and zero rockets or, heaven forbid, gunfire,” Liberman said.

“I hope that we have two calm days awaiting us,” he said.

The defense minister said that in the meantime food and medicine would still be allowed to flow through the Kerem Shalom Crossing.

“Right now approximately 140 to 143 trucks [a day] pass through on average. At its peak, some 1,000 to 1,100 trucks were passing through each day. That’s the difference, and everyone on the other side should make those calculations,” Liberman said.

The UN humanitarian coordinator for the Palestinian territories, Jamie McGoldrick, said Sunday that “supplies of emergency fuel provided by the UN for critical facilities in Gaza are being fast depleted.”

He called on Israel to end restrictions on fuel imports and warned hospitals could soon be forced to close, with emergency supplies set to run out in early August.

“Given ongoing blackouts of about 20 hours a day, if fuel does not come in immediately, people’s lives will be at stake, with the most vulnerable patients, like cardiac patients, those on dialysis, and newborns in intensive care, at highest risk,” he said in a statement.

Gaza suffers from a severe electricity shortage and relies on generators in many cases.

On Friday evening, a Palestinian sniper shot dead an IDF soldier, Staff Sgt. Aviv Levi, 20, along the security fence surrounding the coastal enclave — the first Israeli killed in an attack from Gaza since the 2014 war.

In response, the Israeli military launched a series of raids against dozens of Hamas targets in the Gaza Strip. Four Palestinians were killed, Hamas reported that three were its fighters.

A ceasefire was reached within hours, with many in Israel seeing the speed with which the agreement was reached and the lack of significant counter-attacks by Hamas as a sign that the Gaza-ruling terrorist group was not interested in a new all-out war with the Jewish state.

The new plans announced by Liberman appeared meant to shore up the ceasefire reached Friday night after the flareup.

On Sunday morning, IDF Chief of Staff Gadi Eisenkot visited the spot where Levi was shot and killed.

“The chief of staff praised the actions of commanders over the past few months in handling the security challenges and terrorist activities by Hamas,” the military said in a statement.

After the Friday air strikes, Hamas appears to believe that Israel is prepared to go to war to stop the incendiary kite and balloon attacks from Gaza, along with the recurring violent protests at the border fence. The terror group assesses that such a conflict — the fourth in 10 years — could mean the end of its rule in Gaza, senior defense officials told the Haaretz newspaper.

A senior Israeli diplomatic official told Hebrew-language media that Hamas had vowed to halt airborne arson attacks against Israel going forward. But Hamas sources quoted by Israel Radio on Saturday afternoon denied this.

Nonetheless, Saturday saw the fewest launches of arson kites and balloons in weeks.

The Gaza Strip is under an Israeli-Egyptian blockade that the two countries say is meant to prevent the ruling Hamas terror group from smuggling weapons into the Strip.

The weekend escalation drew international attention, with UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres calling on Hamas Saturday to stop its cross-border arson attacks to avoid “another devastating conflict” in Gaza.

“I am gravely concerned over the dangerous escalation of violence in Gaza and southern Israel,” Guterres said in a statement. “It is imperative that all sides urgently step back from the brink of another devastating conflict.”

“I call on Hamas and other Palestinian militants to cease the launching of rockets and incendiary kites and provocations” along the border fence separating Israel from Gaza, Guterres said, adding that Israel “must exercise restraint to avoid further inflaming the situation.”

He encouraged all parties to work with the UN to find a peaceful solution to the crisis, saying that it endangered lives on both sides while aggravating the “humanitarian catastrophe” in Gaza.

Israel and Hamas have fought three such wars over the past decade. The terror group agreed to the second truce in a week under heavy Egyptian and international pressure.

Israel says it has no interest in engaging in another war with Hamas, but says it will no longer tolerate the group’s campaign of flying incendiary devices into Israel.

Channel 10 news reported the ceasefire came after Egypt warned Hamas that Israel would launch a war “in two hours” if they responded to the retaliatory strikes in Gaza. The report said Egypt threatened to impose sanctions on Hamas if it did not end the cross-border arson attacks.

The ceasefire largely held throughout Saturday, though Israeli tanks twice carried out reprisal strikes at Hamas observation posts inside the Strip.

The IDF said the first strike was in response to an attempted infiltration of the border fence in northern Gaza, while the second strike came after a flaming balloon launched from the Strip sparked a fire in nearby Kibbutz Nahal Oz.

Times of Israel staff and Agencies contributed to this report.