Occupied Jerusalem: The Israeli occupation regime reopened its only border post for people with the Gaza Strip on Monday, a week after shutting it over violence along the border with the Palestinian enclave.
The reopening, following days of relative calm, comes as Egypt holds talks with Palestinian officials as part of efforts to reach a long-term truce with Israel.
A spokeswoman for the Israeli regime’s defence ministry unit that oversees the Erez border post confirmed it had opened as planned on Monday morning.
On Sunday night, Israeli Defence Minister Avigdor Lieberman said the border post was being reopened due to “calm that has been maintained over the past week.”
The occupation regime closed the border post on August 19, after another round of protests and clashes on the border with Gaza.
It has enforced an air, land and sea blockade on the Gaza Strip for more than a decade, but grants permission to a limited number of people to cross for various reasons.
A second border post with Israel, Kerem Shalom, is for goods.
There have been months of tension along the border and several military-flare ups, but recent weeks have seen relative calm.
Egyptian and United Nations officials have been mediating indirect talks on a long-term truce between the occupation regime and Hamas. The regime has launched three wars on Gaza since 2008.
Egyptian officials have held talks with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah this week in a renewed bid to reconcile the movement with Hamas.
The two factions have been deeply divided for more than a decade and Abbas is opposed to any truce with Israel that bypasses his Palestinian National Authority, based in the occupied West Bank.
At least 172 Palestinians in Gaza have been killed by the Israeli occupation regime since March 30. One Israeli occupation soldier has been killed during that time.
Gaza’s only other border is with Egypt, but the Rafah border post with the enclave had largely been kept closed in recent years. Cairo opened it in mid-May and it has mostly remained so since.
