UN WANTS ISRAEL TO OPEN BORDER WITH GAZA/HAMAS

NYTIMES:

Gaza’s already weak economy could collapse unless the main commercial crossing between Gaza and Israel is reopened, Gaza businessmen and United Nations officials said today.

The Karni crossing has been shut since June 12 because the Fatah-affiliated Palestinians who operated it fled after Hamas took over Gaza in bloody fighting. But both Israel and the Fatah leader, President Mahmoud Abbas, have been in no hurry to help Hamas by working to regularize Gaza’s economic life.

Karen AbuZayd, who is the commissioner general of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, which deals with Palestinian refugees, said in an interview: “Without Karni the Gaza economy will collapse unless it is opened for exports and not just for imports, so we don’t punish this whole people.”

Her agency, U.N.R.W.A., is pressing both in Ramallah and in Israel to get Karni open, she said. The agency is already providing food aid to 825,000 people in Gaza, 80 percent of the refugee population, while the World Food Program, another U.N. agency, is feeding another 250,000 non-refugees, she said.

That is nearly 1.1 million people, in a territory with a population of only 1.4 million to 1.5 million, “and further aid dependency is what we’re worried about,” said Ms. AbuZayd, who is an American.

Her Gaza director, John Ging, said that “if present closures continue, we anticipate that Gaza will become nearly a totally aid-dependent society, a society robbed of the possibility of self-sufficiency and the dignity of work.”

Why can't they sustain themselves with trade with their other neghbor, egypt - the jargest arab nation in the world!?

This strikes me a hypocritical of the UN and ARABS: they hate Israel but CANNOT SEEM TO LIVE WITHOUT IT!

This smacks of the same freakin' BS we've heard for DECADES outta the mouths of Castro's supporters: they hate the USA and yet blame the LACK of Cuban-USA trade for all of Cuba's ills! SHIT! Castro's Cuba has been free top trade with the rest of the nations on the whole ENTIRE FREAKIN' EARTH SINCE THE GET-GO! Sheesh.

The land of Gaza and Israle are the same; onyl the people and their ideologies differ - AND THAT'S WHY ISRAEL IS RICH AND VIBRANT AND GAZA A SLUM OF VIOLENT DEPRAVITY!

If Gaza REALLY wants to become self-sufficient then they should stop accepting international handouts from ANYWHERE - including the4 UN and the UNRWA, and abandon Islam.