RAMALLAH: Japan’s foreign minister announced yesterday a resumption of direct aid to the Palestinian Authority and discussed a Japanese-backed plan to boost Israeli-Palestinian economic co-operation.
Taro Aso pledged $11mn in aid to the Western-backed administration which Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas formed in the occupied West Bank after Hamas seized the Gaza Strip in June.
Aso said Japan would also provide $9mn in humanitarian support for Palestinians, including those in Hamas-held Gaza.
“In order to support President Abbas in a visible way, Japan has decided to resume direct financial aid to the Palestinian Authority,” Aso told a news conference with Abbas in the West Bank city of Ramallah.
Aso said he believed Abbas and his prime minister, Salam Fayyad, and other “experienced politicians” would find a way to bring Gaza and the West Bank together “through various negotiations and discussions”. He did not spell out how that would be accomplished.
“I assure you that the split is temporary and it must be resolved,” Abbas said in response.
Aso later took part in a ministerial meeting in the West Bank city of Jericho with Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, Jordanian Foreign Minister Abdul Ilah Khatib and several senior Palestinian officials.
The participants later announced an initiative to build a joint agro-industrial park in the Jordan Valley, likely to be part-funded by Japan. Aso said he hoped such joint projects would support the peace process, though Israel and the Palestinians sounded circumspect given the Gazan crisis.
“This is not a substitute for a meaningful peace process that will lead to a two-state solution,” Saeb Erakat, a top aide to Abbas, told reporters.
“Israelis, Palestinians, Jordanians have every right to be doubtful, have every right to be cynics, have every right to ask: What are we doing here while people are dying out there?”
Japan joined an international aid embargo on the Palestinian Authority after Hamas won parliamentary elections in 2006.
Abbas dismissed the Hamas-led government in June after Gaza’s takeover. The financial taps have gradually reopened to Abbas’s new government led by Fayyad.
“The situation on the ground is not easy,” Livni said. “(But) hope comes because there is a (Palestinian) government that meets the requirements of the international community.”
“Japan, which has gained the trust of both the Arabs and Israelis, understands that the only solution in the Middle East is the establishment of peace and co-existence between Palestinians and the Jewish state,” Aso said in Jordan where he began his tour.
“This project will help create jobs for the Palestinians, boost their economy, build confidence with the Israelis and establish friendship between parties of the peace process,” Aso said, speaking through a translator.
“In order to establish a Palestinian state, it must be economically viable, and we are presenting the initiative of the ‘corridor for peace’ as a means for this economic viability,” he said.
Aso on Tuesday met senior Israeli officials in Jerusalem.
In talks with Livni, Aso urged Israel to ease the severe restriction on movement that the Jewish state has imposed in the occupied West Bank, citing security concerns, since the start of the second Palestinian uprising in 2000. - Agencies |
