June 20, 2007	Wednesday	Jamadi-us-Sani 04, 1428

GAZA CITY, June 19: The Islamists of Hamas accused the West on Tuesday of playing politics with Palestinian aid as the US and Israeli leaders pledged to support the government in the West Bank whose forces they ousted from Gaza last week.

US President George W. Bush and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert both gave strong backing to the emergency cabinet appointed by moderate president Mahmud Abbas after Hamas's takeover of Gaza as they held their third Washington talks in barely a year.Bush said he hoped Abbas and his new US-educated prime minister Salam Fayyad “will be strengthened to the point where they can lead the Palestinians in a different direction.” Olmert said: “I want to strengthen the moderates and cooperate” with Abbas, and raised the prospect of an easing of security controls in the occupied West Bank as well as the release of hundreds of millions of dollars in tax revenues owed to the Palestinian Authority.

The White House talks came a day after both the United States and the European Union restored direct aid to the Palestinian Authority, suspended when Hamas took power after a shock parliamentary election victory over Abbas's secular Fatah faction early last year.

Hamas still refuses to recognise Abbas's dismissal of the national unity government it led until last Thursday and accused the West of trying to manipulate Palestinian public opinion.

“By announcing their political and financial support for the Palestinian Authority, the West is backing an illegitimate government,” Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri charged.

Western support for Fayyad's government was “an attempt to manipulate the Palestinian people and distance it from Hamas,” he charged, adding that the strategy would not work.

Hamas's seizure of Gaza after vicious street battles with Fatah loyalists that left more than 110 people dead has driven a deep wedge in Palestinian society.

Abbas's government is based in his West Bank stronghold while Hamas is in control of Gaza, a tiny overcrowded territory that imports nearly all its food and supplies and where most people depend on international aid.

The Palestinian president is due to give a keynote speech on Wednesday charting the political future but the events of the past week have effectively cut the Palestinian territories in two and dimmed the dream of an independent state alongside Israel.Israel has allowed 12 truckloads of food and medicines to cross into Gaza in the first real easing of the blockade it imposed after Hamas's takeover.

The army also allowed five seriously wounded Palestinians to be brought to Israel for treatment but maintained its refusal to allow hundreds of Gazan asylum-seekers stranded in no-man's land to cross to the occupied West Bank.

Ten trucks of food and two of medical supplies were delivered to Gaza through international organisations at the southern Kerem Shalom checkpoint, Israeli military spokesman Shlomo Dror said.

“This is the first time we've managed to bring supplies... It went very well,” Dror told newsmen, saying that possibilities of shipping aid by sea or parachute into the Gaza Strip had earlier been discounted as alternatives.

He said the aid was delivered without contact with Hamas, which Israel boycotts as a terrorist organisation.

Tuesday's trucks were the first to drive into the Gaza Strip since Israel sealed Gaza's borders in the wake of Hamas's takeover, sparking fears of a humanitarian disaster for the territory's 1.5 million people.

Several hundred Palestinians are camping out in miserable conditions at the Erez border crossing with Israel, desperate to flee feared retribution by Hamas militants.

“If we can't get to the West Bank, give us political asylum in an Arab country, in Europe, in the United States. Anywhere,” shouted desperate civil servant Amr.

The Israeli army said it was providing the asylum-seekers with food and water but would not admit them to the occupied West Bank for fear there were militants among them who had engaged in attacks against Israel.

But it did allow five seriously wounded Gazans to be evacuated to Israel for treatment.—AFP