Asia

Home page

Asia

Qatari development in Gaza boosts Hamas rule

06 October 2012 00:46 (UTC +04:00)

Baku-APA. A group of curious young passersby stood at a crossroad of the overcrowded Gaza city’s main street of Omer al-Mukhtar, watching a huge truck with a hoist holding a huge colorful placard to be erected on the side of the road with the help of three local workers, APA reports.

"Thanks Qatar ... You fulfilled your Promise," said the placard, which included two large colorful Qatari and Palestinian flags above a building which is under construction and an old woman sitting near her destroyed house, in reference to the start of the Qatari finance development in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip.

"Gaza Strip populations don’t only want Qatar to finance development projects, they want an end to the ongoing division between Hamas and Fatah, they need to lift the Israeli siege, end poverty and minimize the rates of unemployment," said Husam Hijazi, a 22-year-old student who studies economics in a Gaza University and will graduate later in summer.

Hijazi, who watched the hoist and the workers placing the placard, told Xinhua that Qatar’s role in the region "is doubtful and it seems that it uses its money to boost the Muslim Brotherhood Movement in the Arab world."

At the crossroad in the center of Gaza City, drivers in their cars that temporarily stopped waiting for the green light all looked at the placard trying to read the sentence "Thanks Qatar."

"Instead of thanking Qatar, stop corruption and end the ongoing division," said one of the drivers.

The Hamas-run government in Gaza had on Wednesday officially announced the start of implementing Qatar’s donation to reconstruct the Gaza Strip, where the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) in the West Bank slammed the issue and considered it a way to boost the internal Palestinian division with Hamas.

Hamas movement, which won the legislative elections in 2006, had violently seized control of the coastal enclave in June 2007 following weeks of streets infighting with the security forces of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

Hamas routed his security forces and controlled all Gaza.

Due to the ongoing Israeli blockade, the division between Hamas and Fatah, and the three-week Israeli war on the Gaza Strip in 2009, rates of poverty and unemployment had horribly increased. According to official figures of international organizations, the poverty rate in the Gaza Strip has reached 60 percent, while the unemployment rate is up to 50 percent.

Yousef al-Ghureiz, the minister of the Hamas-run public work and housing, told Xinhua "We began with the first batch of the Qatari grant projects, where we published tenders to start with four projects out of the total projects of the Qatari grant, which has reached 254 million U.S. dollars.

He said the first four development projects will include the resumption of constructing a huge housing projects in northern Gaza Strip with more education, health and commercial services in addition to paving roads and building up parks and gardens.

"The new housing project will include buildings; each one will consist of five floors with a cost of 30 million dollars and at the end the project will produce 1,000 apartments," al-Ghureiz said, adding that "three main streets need to be reconstructed with a cost of 128 million dollars."

As the Gaza Strip is passing through a severe shortage of fuels, Qatar had supplied the coastal densely-populated enclave with 30, 000 tons of fuels.

Five months ago, Israel accepted to coordinate the entrance of the fuel from Egypt to Gaza through the crossing points that are under its control.

Egypt allowed the Qatari fuel in Gaza to operate the sole power plant, and resolve the electricity crisis and reduce the hours of blackout that Gaza residents suffer from. However, Egypt stopped pumping fuels after the attack on its army post in Sinai on Aug. 5 which killed 16 soldiers and wounded seven others.

Al-Ghureiz urged Egypt to facilitate the development projects in Gaza and fulfill the pledges to succeed the operation of re- constructing the Gaza Strip. Egypt had intensified its security measures and had destroyed more than 100 smuggling tunnels under its borders with Gaza since Aug. 5.

On Sept. 25, a high-ranking Qatari delegation, headed by ambassador Mohamed al-Ammadi, arrived in the Gaza Strip through Egypt to closely watch the implementation of the reconstruction and development projects financed by their country. Development will be in the fields of construction and agriculture.

Mohamed Ishteya, a Fatah central committee member and the former PNA minister of public work and housing in the West Bank, told Xinhua that the Qatari development "has political implications that damage the official Palestinian representation in the World."

"The PNA is not against the reconstruction of the Gaza Strip, ending poverty and minimizing the rate of unemployment, but any country wants to start projects of development there has to coordinate with the legal representative of the Palestinian people and not with an illegal power (Hamas)," said Ishteya.

Hamas chief Khaled Meshaal and President Abbas signed in February last year on a Qatari-brokered reconciliation understanding. They agreed that a national unity government headed by Abbas for six months will be in charge of the whole process of reconstructing the Gaza Strip.