Moussa's visit to Gaza welcomed despite ambiguous goals
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Arab League Secretary General Amr Moussa will only stay in the Gaza Strip for a few hours on Sunday, yet, the Palestinians see the visit by the high-ranking Arab figure historic and essential.
Special arrangements have been made for properly receiving the senior Arab diplomat, said a source with the Islamic Hamas movement which has been ruling the Gaza Strip since June 2007.
Moussa will meet at Sunday noon with the Hamas administration's Prime Minister Ismail Haneya and other parliament members and leaders of several fractions, Yousef Rezqah, the prime minister's political advisor told Xinhua.
The government and the Hamas movement expect Moussa to provide new insights on ending the three-year Israeli siege on the Gaza Strip and on reconciliation between Fatah and Hamas, Rezqah said.
Various countries, while condemning the Israeli commando raid on the Gaza-bound aid flotilla nearly two weeks ago, urged Israel to immediately lift the blockade imposed on the enclave since 2007.
The Hamas movement would brief Moussa on the recent developments in the Palestinian politics, especially its standpoint on the indirect talks with Israel launched in May with the support of the Arab League, Rezqah said.
Moussa informed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas of his intention to visit the Gaza Strip and meet Hamas leaders last week, a few days after Abbas sent a delegation led by businessman Munib al-Masri to the enclave to work on Palestinian reconciliation.
Naji Shurab, a political science professor with the Gaza-based al-Azhar University told Xinhua that the visit by Amr Moussa "is special and significant," noting "Moussa is not coming to Gaza by his own, but he is authorized by all the Arabs and his visit to Gaza has many political indications."
Shurab said the visit expressed the Arabs' desire to end Israeli blockade and the internal-Palestinian feuds, for that, Moussa will play an important role in ending the current division between the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.
Besides, Shurab said the main goal of Moussa's visit is to convince Hamas rulers to sign the Egyptian-drafted reconciliation pact, and then talk about lifting the siege on Gaza.
Egypt, who brokers the inter-Palestinian dialogue, postponed the dialogue indefinitely after the Hamas movement rejected a reconciliation pact it drafted last October.
However, Yasser Abed Rabbo, secretary general of Palestine Liberation Organization's (PLO) Executive Committee, said Moussa's visit does not have direct political indication to Hamas, adding the PLO welcomes visit of any senior Arab or international official to the Gaza Strip to help end the Israeli siege.
Other analysts believe Moussa's visit aims at easing Palestinian and international pressure and criticism on the Arab League, as the AL vowed two years ago that it would spare no efforts to end the Israeli siege on the Gaza Strip.
Talal Oukal, a Gaza-based political analyst told Xinhua that Moussa visits the Gaza Strip just to express solidarity with residents of the enclave, noting that the ten hours' visit will be enough neither for in-depth dialogue nor for achieving any missions.
"Moussa wants to visit the Gaza Strip, and several places, including destroyed areas and hospitals and to tell reporters that he is in the Gaza Strip and he came to tell Israel and the world to end the siege and the embargo imposed here three years ago," said Oukal.
