Israel Hands Over £50m To Moderates

Israel ended its 18-month economic blockade of the Palestinian Authority yesterday when it transferred more than $100 million (£50 million) to the moderate Government in the West Bank.

At the same time, the Israeli army stepped up attacks on militants in the Gaza Strip, killing the local Islamic Jihad leader in a series of airstrikes.

Israeli officials said that $118 million of an estimated $600 million in tax had been transferred, with the remainder to be handed over in the next six months. The revenue stemmed largely from duties on goods heading into Palestinian territories and had been frozen by Israel after the Islamist party Hamas took power in elections early last year.

The West hopes that the funds will help to shore up Mahmoud Abbas, the pro-Western President whose secular Fatah movement wants to negotiate a two-state peace settlement with Israel. Much of the money will pay civil servants. Fatah leaders say that they lost their battle with Hamas three weeks ago in the Gaza Strip in part because many of their policemen had not been paid. That wage freeze resulted from the international embargo on the Palestinian unity Government led by Hamas but including Fatah.

Ehud Olmert, the Israeli Prime Minister, praised Mr Abbas yesterday for his decrees ordering all militias in the West Bank to disarm. But he insisted that Israeli forces would continue to hunt down militants.

Israeli airstrikes over the weekend killed at least seven wanted Palestinian militants. The strikes included a missile attack on a car in the southern Gaza Strip that killed Ziad al-Ghnam, the head of Islamic Jihad’s armed wing, and two of his comrades. Israel accused al-Ghnam of masterminding attacks in Israel, including one that killed a pregnant woman and her four daughters in 2004.

Israel did not limit its strikes to Islamist groups, but also targeted a violent offshoot of Mr Abbas’s Fatah movement. An airstrike on a workshop producing weapons in the Gaza Strip killed four militants from the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, a Fatah splinter group that supports the President’s decree but has refused to lay down its arms in the fight against Israel.

“This pinpointed activity will continue anywhere in the South (Gaza) or in Judaea and Samaria (the West Bank),” Mr Olmert insisted.

But he admitted that moves by Mr Abbas — whom he met at a summit last week — “cautiously allow for the creation of new ways to co-operate”.

The continuing strikes in Gaza and the West Bank put the weakened Palestinian leader in a delicate spot. Hamas, whose manifesto calls for the destruction of the Jewish state, has already denounced him for talking to the Israelis while refusing to meet its own leaders to discuss ways of reuniting the divided Palestinian territories.

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