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Blockade Thwarts Any Postwar Building Boom in Gaza

[Reuters] Alastair Macdonald - "We should have started reconstruction the day the war ended. But we have no supplies," says Gaza builder Anwar al-Sahabani. Peter Lerner, an Israel Defense Ministry official dealing with trade for Gaza, said Israel was helping international aid agencies in their efforts to move in food and other vital supplies. But until Israel was satisfied that cement would not be used by Hamas for fortifications and that steel pipes would be used only for plumbing and not to build rockets to fire at Israeli towns, the embargo on construction material remained. "We are not interested today in rebuilding Hamas, their bunkers. We are not interested in supplying them with pipes that will be used for rockets." The smuggling tunnels that provide many of the goods in Gaza's stores cannot supply large quantities of building materials. "Let nobody delude themselves that we are going to open the crossings for anything but humanitarian essentials," said Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, Israel's infrastructure minister. "We don't intend to open the crossings before [captured IDF soldier] Gilad Shalit comes home."
2009-01-30 06:00:00
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