The Israeli Cabinet on Sunday agreed to release $600-million in Palestinian tax revenues as part of a programme to shore up the rule of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in the West Bank.
Israel has withheld the tax revenues since Hamas entered the government last year, although it released small sums to Abbas for healthcare. The Hamas seizure of power in Gaza, and the subsequent appointment by Abbas of an emergency government excluding the Islamic movement, gave the Israeli Cabinet the opportunity to change its policy.
The release will take place gradually. It was approved before Ehud Olmert, the Israeli Prime Minister, travels to Sharm el Sheik for a summit with Abbas, King Abdullah of Jordan, and Hosni Mubarak of Egypt.
According to the Israeli media, Israel has a package of measures to offer Mr Abbas at the summit: ceasing operations in West Bank cities, removing road blocks, allowing Russia to deliver 60 armoured personnel carriers to the Palestinian Authority, and granting more licences to Palestinian businessmen to trade with Israel.
Olmert and his aides insisted they had no intention of meeting Abbas’s desire to move to final status talks about the creation of a Palestinian state.
Olmert told Sunday’s Cabinet meeting not to expect a breakthrough: ”We have an interest in this meeting, but I don’t want anyone to think we’re on the brink of a dramatic breakthrough.”
Aides later explained there would be no discussion of any final status issues, a move on which is something Abbas believes is key to thwarting the political ambitions of Hamas.
Meanwhile, Israel made its first air strike on a car in Gaza for several weeks on Sunday, hitting a vehicle used by Islamic Jihad in the strip and killing at least one militant, hospital officials and residents said. The army confirmed the strike.
In the West Bank, 15 Hamas activists were arrested on Saturday by Palestinian Authority security forces and Abbas cancelled the licences of all NGOs.
Monday marks the first anniversary of the abduction of Gilad Shalit, a 19-year-old Israeli conscript taken when a Hamas-led group of gunmen attacked an army position.
A report on Israeli Channel 2 TV on Sunday night said he was being held in the southern Gaza Strip — in an underground room inside a booby-trapped building near Shaboura refugee camp, close to Rafah in the south of the coastal territory. The reporter said his information came from Hamas sources. — Guardian Unlimited Â