RIYADH, May 14: Saudi Arabia on Monday called for an end to the international economic blockade of the Palestinian government even as it tried to quell the deadliest factional fighting in two months in the Gaza Strip.
The official SPA news agency said the Council of Ministers, at its regular weekly meeting presided over by King Abdullah, expressed its full support for the Palestinian national unity government that took office on March 17.
The cabinet also appealed to the international community “to end the blockade on the Palestinian people” and to “deal directly and unconditionally” with the national unity government, SPA said.
Most Western powers cut off aid when the Hamas movement took office in March 2006 after winning elections in January that year, worsening the already parlous economic situation in the Palestinian territories.
Hamas maintains its steadfast refusal to renounce violence, recognise Israel and honour interim accords.
Lack of financial resources is cited as one of the factors behind the increase in tension in the powderkeg Gaza Strip, with fresh violence erupting on Sunday between loyalists of president Mahmud Abbas's secular Fatah faction and prime minister Ismail Haniya's Islamist Hamas.
With eight people killed in the latest fighting, Haniya's cabinet on Monday ordered the immediate deployment in the Gaza Strip of security forces controlled both by Abbas and the interior minister under one leadership in a bid to quell the bloodletting.
King Abdullah in February brokered a peace deal between the rival factions, paving the way for the formation of the national unity government.
The landmark power-sharing deal, clinched in Makkah, was forged precisely to end similar infighting that killed 100 Palestinians in the two preceding months.
The Saudi cabinet also called on Monday for recognition of a long-dormant Arab plan for Middle East peace which was formally launched in Riyadh in March at a summit of Arab leaders.
“Regional peace demands that Israel respect the legitimacy (of the Palestinian government) and the Arab peace plan,” it said.
The summit revived the five-year-old plan that offers Israel normal ties if it withdraws from all land seized in the 1967 Middle East war and allows for the creation of a Palestinian state and the return of Palestinian refugees.
Israel rejected the plan when it was first adopted in Beirut in 2002, but has since said that it could serve as a basis for talks provided there are changes on the refugee issue, something Arab heads of state rejected at the Riyadh summit.—AFP
