Israel to partially reopen Gaza private sector trade as Netanyahu prepares updated war plan

Israel to partially reopen Gaza private sector trade as Netanyahu prepares updated war plan

to end the war. We’re going to cross send to Jerusalem, talk to our correspondent Nogatanapolski who joins us from there. Noga, we’re just getting very vague details about this idea. Tell us what first of all you’re hearing about it from there. I will. Thank you, Stuart. But it it’s important to say we’re not hearing much. And in fact, every single Israeli government initiative right now is being announced through very vague statements issued by fairly lowly uh spokespeople or by outright leaks from anonymous officials. So it is very very difficult to know what is a trial balloon, what is a real change in policy and who is directing what. And it does appear that this is the government’s uh intention to leave us all a little bit not in the know, not knowing what’s going on. And I think in that way to stave off criticism because if a policy is made clear, then people can critique it. But what we know here and what was announced by a branch of the IDF, the branch that handles uh interaction with Palestinians in the occupied territories, um is that something like regular commerce will be able to restart in Gaza. It’s an astonishing development. Israel uh imposed a complete 100% blockade, didn’t let a drop of anything into Gaza all of March and all of April. By May, it became clear this was causing a tremendous crisis. Uh in June or late May, Israel put into place the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which was supposed to replace the UN agencies in distributing food and has turned into a catastrophe in which people trying to come close to the distribution hubs are killed every single day, mostly by Israeli gunfire, but also by others. Um there have been trampling incidents and now out of the blue we hear com commercial efforts, commercial shops, uh importers, exporters are going to be able to begin work today. We don’t know much beyond that, but it does hearken back, at least in the words, to what existed in Gaza before this war when uh for example, Gazan farmers could export strawberries, when formula for babies was imported. At the time, before the war, Gaza was not solely dependent on aid agencies, though they were very active there, but there was commerce with Gaza. And now the Israeli government is at least hinting that this may be about to restart. No, if Israel does go down this route, what might we expect the skeptics to say here? Well, the skeptics are already saying that this is just an effort to try and get international crit criticism of Israel off of Israel’s back as Netanyahu is planning as it seems as he has let it be known seems to be planning the full military reoccupation of Gaza. But again, this is another policy shift which would cause an uproar globally and has already caused an uproar domestically in Israel and it’s not being fully announced. It is apparently going to be discussed in a cabinet meeting sometime today. That cabinet meeting has already been twice postponed. But we see the Israeli government talking at the same time about sort of restoring a kind of commercial normality to Gaza and at the same time um occupying it fully and taking over all of Gaza for Israel. These appear to be contradictory efforts, but we’re not 100% certain. No, thanks very much. Another joining us there from

Israel announced plans Tuesday to reopen some private sector trade with Gaza, approving a limited number of merchants under strict security checks. The move came as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu prepared to present an updated war strategy that could include re-occupying parts of the territory. Noga Tarnopolsky reports from Jerusalem.
#Gaza #Israel #Netanyahu

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