Tag Archives: Palestine

U.S. looking for way to move forward on Israel, Palestinian peace

PARIS (Reuters) – The United States is looking for a way to break the deadlock between Israel and the Palestinians, Secretary of State John Kerry said on Sunday, acknowledging that by itself it could not find a solution.

Having twice failed to achieve Israeli-Palestinian peace, the Obama administration is discussing ways to help preserve the prospect of an increasingly threatened two-state solution, U.S. officials have told Reuters.

At the same time, France is seeking support for an initiative to relaunch talks between the two sides this summer and prevent what one French diplomat has called the risk of a “powder keg” exploding.

Last year France failed to get the United States on board for a U.N. Security Council resolution to set parameters for talks between the two sides and a deadline for a deal. Since then, the stance of former foreign minister Laurent Fabius, to recognize a Palestinian state automatically if the new initiative fails, has been toned down.

“Obviously we’re all looking for a way forward. The United States and myself remain deeply committed to a two state solution. It is absolutely essential,” Kerry said when asked whether the U.S. was ready to cooperate with Paris’ efforts.

“There’s not any one country or one person who can resolve this. This is going to require the global community, it will require international support,” he said speaking alongside European foreign ministers in Paris.

A former ambassador to Washington, Pierre Vimont, is heading France’s diplomatic push and will be in Israel, the Palestinian territories and the United States this week to discuss the French initiative.

With U.S. efforts to broker a two-state solution in tatters since in April 2014 and Washington focused on this year’s election, Paris is lobbying countries to commit to a conference before May that would outline incentives and give guarantees for Israelis and Palestinians, seeking face-to-face talks before August.

“The conflict is getting worse and the status quo cannot continue,” France’s Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault said.

U.S. officials have no expectation peace talks will resume before the end of U.S. President Barack Obama’s term in January 2017 and have played down the odds of any quick decision on how the White House might help preserve a two-state solution.

“We’re talking about any number of different ways to try to change the situation on the ground in an effort to try to generate some confidence,” Kerry said. “So we are listening carefully to the French proposal.

“At the moment it’s a difficult one, because of the violence that has been taking place, and there are not many people in Israel or in the region itself right now that believe in the possibilities of peace because of those levels of violence.”

(Reporting by John Irish; Editing by Ruth Pitchford)

U.S. hopes to preserve two-state outcome for Israel, Palestinians

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Having twice failed to achieve Israeli-Palestinian peace, the Obama administration is discussing ways to help preserve the prospect of an increasingly threatened two-state solution, U.S. officials said.

One possibility under discussion is to issue an outline of a deal to end the nearly 70-year-old conflict on such matters as borders, security, the status of Jerusalem and the fate of Palestinian refugees.

Such an outline could range from a brief description of core tradeoffs the two sides might need to make to a detailed set of “parameters” like those that former U.S. President Bill Clinton laid out for the parties in late 2000.

Under one scenario, the outline could be enshrined in a U.N. Security Council resolution to give it greater international standing for a future U.S. president or the parties whenever they might resume peace talks that collapsed in April 2014.

“It’s one of the ideas that they are talking about,” said a U.S. official who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Resorting to a U.N. resolution would require a major shift in long-standing U.S. policy, which has mostly opposed use of the United Nations as a forum for pressuring Israel. The United States has repeatedly insisted it is up to the two sides to directly negotiate over their differences.

Another possibility would be for U.S. President Barack Obama to make a speech laying out his principles for a settlement.

U.S. officials have no expectation peace talks will resume before the end of Obama’s term in January 2017 and they played down the odds of any quick decision on how the White House might help preserve a two-state solution.

“People in the government are asking the question what can we do to keep the two-state solution alive, and they’re generating ideas,” said a senior U.S. official.

The ideas had not yet risen to senior White House staff and Obama is focused on other issues including Islamic State, Iran and Cuba, the officials said.

Two separate peace efforts, by George Mitchell and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, have failed during Obama’s seven years in office.

TWO-STATE SOLUTION DYING ON OBAMA’S WATCH?

A two-state solution long seen as the most internationally acceptable outcome envisages a Palestinian state on most of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, lands Israel captured in a 1967 war, and an Israeli state that absorbs some of the settlements Israel built on occupied land in return for mutually agreed land swaps.

Such a solution appears remote because of ongoing Jewish settlement building; a split between the Palestinian Fatah and Hamas factions; preoccupation within the Palestinian Authority about who may succeed 81-year-old President Mahmoud Abbas; and a wave of Palestinian stabbings, shootings and car rammings of Israelis.

The Palestinian attacks have killed 28 Israelis and two U.S. citizens since October, while Israeli forces have killed at least 179 Palestinians, 121 of whom Israel says were assailants.

Current and former U.S. officials have warned that a failure to break the impasse could lead to greater conflict and that continued occupation of Palestinian land puts at risk Israel’s character as a Jewish and democratic state.

Former officials also cite a deepening cynicism on both sides regarding peace, making it ever harder to achieve.

“In the absence of negotiations, actions on the ground are making it more and more difficult to see how a two-state solution could be achieved,” said Martin Indyk, Obama’s former special envoy for the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations.

“I think there is a real concern on the part of the president and the secretary of state,” said Indyk, who is now executive vice president of the Brookings Institution think tank, “that instead of achieving a breakthrough to a two-state solution, the two-state solution will die on their watch.”

(Additional reporting by Patricia Zengerle; Editing by Howard Goller)

Biden says his family was near scene of Tel Aviv attack

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – U.S. Vice President Joe Biden said on Wednesday his wife Jill and their grandchildren were dining on a Tel Aviv beach when a Palestinian killed an American tourist with a knife and wounded 11 other people on the seafront “not very far” away.

Since October, Palestinian stabbings, shootings and car rammings have killed 28 Israelis and two U.S. citizens. Israeli forces have killed at least 179 Palestinians, 121 of whom Israel says were assailants. Most others were shot dead during violent protests.

“I don’t know exactly whether it was a hundred meters or a thousand meters,” Biden, on a visit to Israel, told reporters about Tuesday’s assault.

“It brings home that it can happen, it can happen anywhere, at any time,” he said, after meeting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem.

Violence has surged since Biden’s arrival in Israel on Tuesday as part of a regional visit. Two Palestinians, who Israel said opened fire and wounded one man in Jerusalem on Wednesday, and a Palestinian who the military said tried to stab soldiers in the occupied West Bank, were killed by Israeli forces.

On Tuesday, Biden was meeting former Israeli President Shimon Peres several blocks from where the Palestinian was running along the Tel Aviv beachfront stabbing pedestrians and motorists stuck in traffic.

Taylor Force, a 28-year-old Vanderbilt University graduate student and a U.S. military veteran who Biden said served tours of duty in Afghanistan and Iraq, was killed and 11 people were wounded before police shot the attacker dead.

“Let me say in no uncertain terms, the United States of America condemns these acts and condemns the failure to condemn these acts,” Biden said, with Netanyahu at his side, in remarks that appeared critical of Palestinian leaders.

Palestinian leaders say many Palestinian attackers have acted out of desperation in the absence of movement toward creation of an independent state. Israel says they are being incited to violence by their leaders and on social media.

Later in the day, Biden, who has visited the Gulf during his trip and plans to travel to Jordan next, was due to meet Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in the West Bank.

(Editing by Ralph Boulton)

Palestinian kills U.S. tourist in stabbing spree on Tel Aviv boardwalk

TEL AVIV (Reuters) – An American tourist was stabbed to death and at least nine other people were wounded by a Palestinian armed with a knife on a popular boardwalk in Tel Aviv on Tuesday, authorities said, while U.S. Vice President Joe Biden was in a meeting a few miles away.

The attack took place in the popular Jaffa port area, which is a favorite spot among tourists. The Magen David Adom ambulance service said four of the wounded had severe injuries.

“A terrorist, an illegal resident who came from somewhere in the Palestinian territories, came here to Jaffa and embarked on a run … along the boardwalk. On his way he indiscriminately stabbed people,” Tel Aviv Mayor Ron Huldai told Army Radio.

He said a police officer eventually caught up with the attacker and shot him dead.

The U.S. State Department strongly condemned the attack and identified the slain American as Taylor Allen Force.

“As we have said many times, there is absolutely no justification for terrorism. We continue to encourage all parties to take affirmative steps to reduce tensions and restore calm,” it said in a statement.

Biden arrived in Israel late on Tuesday for a two-day visit, and was meeting former Israeli President Shimon Peres in Jaffa around the time of the stabbings.

Tuesday also saw three other attacks by Palestinians.

In Jerusalem, a Palestinian opened fire at Israeli police on a crowded street, seriously wounding two officers, before being shot dead, and a 50-year-old Palestinian woman who tried to stab Israeli police officers was also shot and killed.

In the Tel Aviv suburb of Petah Tikva, a Palestinian entered a store and stabbed an Israeli. The wounded man and the store owner together overpowered the attacker and fought him off using the same knife. The attacker died of his wounds, a police spokesman said.

Since October, Palestinian stabbings, shootings and car rammings have killed 28 Israelis and two Americans. Israeli forces have killed at least 177 Palestinians, 119 of whom Israel says were assailants. Most others were shot dead during violent protests.

(Reporting by Rami Amichay; Additional reporting by Washington Newsroom; Writing by Ari Rabinovitch; Editing by Kevin Liffey and Sandra Maler)

About half of Israeli Jews want to expel Arabs, survey finds

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Nearly half of Israeli Jews believe Arabs should be expelled or transferred from Israel, according to a survey on the political views of Jewish religious and secular communities.

The poll released on Tuesday by the Washington-based Pew Research Center, a non-partisan think tank, also found that many Israelis – Jews and Arabs – appeared to have lost hope for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Forty-eight percent of Israeli Jews said they agreed with the statement that Arabs should be expelled or transferred from Israel, where they make up 19 percent of the population of 8.4 million.

While 54 to 71 percent of Jews who defined themselves as ultra-Orthodox, religious or “traditional” supported such a step, only about 36 percent of the secular community did.

President Reuven Rivlin called the findings a “wake-up call for Israeli society”.

The survey also addressed the role of religion in a modern-day democracy founded as a Jewish state, exposing wide gaps between Orthodox and non-religious Jewish respondents.

According to the poll, 89 percent of Israel’s secular Jews want democratic principles to outweigh Jewish ritual law when the two clash. An identical percentage of ultra-Orthodox Jews take the opposite view.

In addition, about 8 in 10 Arabs complained of heavy discrimination in Israeli society against Muslims, the largest religious minority, while 79 percent of Jews questioned said Jewish citizens deserved preferential treatment.

“It pains me to see the gap that exists in the public’s consciousness – religious and secular – between the notion of Israel as a Jewish state and as a democratic state,” Rivlin said in a statement after receiving the report. “A further problem is the attitude toward Israel’s Arab citizens.”

In the poll, 9 percent of Jews identified themselves as ultra-Orthodox, 13 percent as religious, 29 percent as ‘traditional’ and 49 percent as secular.

It found devout Jews largely lean to the right politically, while secular Jews mainly see themselves as centrists.

Among the many divides on social and religious issues, the vast majority of ultra-Orthodox and religious Jews supported a long-standing shutdown of most public transportation on the Jewish Sabbath, while 94 percent of secular Jews took the opposite view.

Most secular Jews saw themselves as “Israelis first”, while 91 percent of ultra-Orthodox and 80 percent of religious Jews in general said they were “Jews first”.

About 40 percent of Israeli Jews believe a way can be found for Israel to co-exist with a future Palestine, while a similar percentage believe this is not possible, according to the poll.

Among the Arab population, about half saw such co-existence as possible, compared with 74 percent in 2013.

Israeli-Palestinian peace talks collapsed in 2014, just before a seven-week war between Israel and Palestinian armed groups in Gaza.

The researchers conducted 5,601 face-to-face interviews with 3,789 Jews, 871 Muslims, 468 Christians and 439 Druze in Israel from October 2014 to May 2015.

(Reporting by Jeffrey Heller; Editing by Kevin Liffey)

Palestinians turn to makeshift guns in escalation of street violence

By Dan Williams and Ismael Khader

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – During previous rounds of Palestinian violence, Israeli raids on the occupied West Bank would turn up small arsenals of military assault rifles. Now hauls more often include what look like toy guns and the tools required to make them lethal.

After years of seizures that have choked the supply of unlicensed M-16s and Kalashnikovs in the territory and raised black-market prices, some Palestinians are turning to improvised firearms to carry out street attacks on Israelis.

Five months into a series of killings by Palestinians that have mainly involved stabbings and car-rammings, some are stepping up the assaults by using such makeshift guns.

This escalation could pose problems for authorities on both sides, who are seeking to keep the bloodshed from spilling over into another uprising that could draw in armed Palestinian factions and trigger sweeping Israeli crackdowns.

The shift was illustrated by the haul from an Israeli raid on a foundry in the occupied West Bank this week; photos released by Israel’s Shin Bet intelligence service showed a sniper rifle held together by duct tape, a Wild West-style long gun with a silencer welded on, as well as a lathe machine tool.

The foundry may be a testament to the effectiveness of past raids, by both Israeli and Palestinian security services.

“A genuine M-16 now costs 60,000 to 70,000 shekels ($15,000-$18,000) on the street, whereas an improvised gun can cost as little as 2,000 shekels ($512),” one Palestinian with knowledge of the trade told Reuters. “For a young person looking to carry out an attack with limited resources, the choice is obvious.”

The crudity of the cobbled-together guns may offer scant comfort to Palestinian and Israeli security officials.

Palestinian leaders and international powers have already said Israel has often used excessive force against assailants, many of them youths, though Israel has rejected this, saying it has prevented lethal attacks on civilians and security forces.

Security experts cautioned that Israel was likely to be even less restrained should its forces or citizens come under regular attack with guns, regardless of how lethal they are.

“It’s one thing for a soldier to face someone who is trying to stab him with scissors, quite another to face a gunman – he can never know whether if there is more ammunition, if the gun is still a threat, so he is likelier to shoot,” said Amy Ayalon, who headed the Shin Bet between 1996 and 2000, when the last Palestinian revolt against Israel erupted.

“So the response, on site, tends to be harsher, and the political echelon will be forced to back it up.”

OVER 200 KILLED

Palestinian attackers have killed 28 Israelis and a U.S. citizen since October. Israeli security forces have killed at least 172 Palestinians, 114 of whom Israel says were assailants, while most others were shot dead during violent protests.

Tensions have been stoked by various factors including a dispute over Jerusalem’s al-Aqsa mosque compound and the failure of several rounds of peace talks to secure the Palestinians an independent state in Israeli-occupied territory.

Palestinian leaders have said that with no breakthrough on the horizon, desperate youngsters see no future ahead. Israel says young Palestinians are being incited to violence by their leaders and by Islamist groups calling for Israel’s destruction.

Two Palestinians who killed an Israeli policewoman and wounded another in Jerusalem last month before they were shot dead were armed with improvised guns known as “Carlos”, Israeli authorities said.

Carlos – simple knock-offs of Swedish-made Carl Gustav machine-pistols made in metal foundries – are among the cheapest makeshift guns to buy on the black market, say the authorities.

According to one Israeli security source, the relatively low Israeli death toll in the attack was partly due to the gunmen’s failure to fire rapidly, possibly due to the Carlos jamming.

Israel is also holding two Palestinian brothers from the West Bank city of Hebron for four gun attacks that wounded two soldiers and two civilians. The Shin Bet says they used a Carlo and an improvised sniper rifle with a silencer fashioned out of an oil can as instructed by a video they found on the Internet.

A spokesman for the Palestinian Security Services in the West Bank said they were aware makeshift weapons were being manufactured there.

“Making weapons locally is common everywhere in the world and we are moving against the sources of such weapons because they represent a risk,” Adnan Al-Dmairi told Reuters.

Improvised guns can be air-rifles converted to shoot real bullets rather than pellets, the Palestinian source said. According to one Shin Bet official, some West Bank armourers cannibalize parts from broken M-16s or Kalashnikovs and reassemble them as workable composites, with missing components manufactured in private workshops. These can sell for around 5,000 shekels ($1,280) on the Palestinian black market.

“Obviously such weapons will not be as reliable as a complete factory-made gun,” the Shin Bet official told Reuters. “Most of the recent gun attacks employed improvised firearms. It appears that in many cases they malfunctioned.”

(Writing by Dan Williams; Editing by Jeffrey Heller and Pravin Char)

Hamas not seeking a war with Israel, says top official

GAZA (Reuters) – A senior leader of the Islamist group Hamas said the Palestinian movement was not seeking a new war with Israel and insisted a network of tunnels it is digging, some of which have reached into Israel in the past, was “defensive”.

Speaking to members of the Foreign Press Association in Gaza, Mahmoud al-Zahar, a medical doctor seen by many as a hardliner, suggested the prospects of reconciliation with the rival Fatah party of President Mahmoud Abbas were slim, despite years of international efforts to forge unity.

“I think nobody here in the region is looking for a war,” said Zahar, 71, who has survived two Israeli assassination attempts, one of which, in 2003, killed his son.

“We are not looking for any confrontation with Israel, but if they are going to launch an aggression we have to defend ourselves,” he told reporters late on Wednesday.

Hamas seized control of Gaza in 2007 after a brief civil war with Abbas’s forces. It maintains strict security over the coastal territory, where more than 1.9 million people live. Zahar is one of Hamas’s founders and one of its most senior figures in Gaza, regarded as close to the military wing.

The movement has, since its founding in 1987, advocated the destruction of Israel, seeing all of historic Palestine, from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean, as its land.

However, some of its leaders have indicated in recent years that they would accept a Palestinian state in Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem, captured by Israel in a 1967 war, in return for a long-term truce with their neighbor.

Israel regards the truce idea as a ploy and will not negotiate with Hamas, which the EU and United States list as a terrorist group.

Asked why Hamas was building tunnels, Zahar said they were defensive and suggested they were nothing against the might of the U.S.-supplied Israeli military.

“You are speaking about tunnels? You are not speaking about F-35 (fighter planes)? You are not speaking about the nuclear bomb in Israel… The tunnels are a matter of self-defense,” he said.

Hamas’s armed wing has lost 10 fighters this year in tunnel collapses. In strongly worded speeches, the group’s leaders have pledged to pursue the tunnel building, prompting alarm in Israel, which has stepped up efforts to find the tunnels and stop them reaching its territory.

The heightened tension on both sides has fueled fears of another war, which would be the fifth since Hamas won Palestinian elections in 2006. The last war, in July-August 2014, left more than 2,100 Palestinians dead, most of them civilians, while 73 Israelis, nearly all soldiers, were killed.

INTERNAL SPLIT

With an Israeli-Egyptian blockade on Gaza making it difficult for goods and people to move in and out of the territory, Hamas and Fatah have made efforts to reconcile their differences and form a functioning unity government.

Yet the latest round of discussions in the Qatar capital Doha has become bogged down, despite early signs of progress, and Zahar gave the impression that a deal was some way off.

He said Abbas and Fatah were not sincere about achieving reconciliation, a charge Fatah threw back. He also vowed that his group would never recognize the state of Israel, which Abbas and Fatah have done and want Hamas to do.

“They (Fatah) have no will to achieve an agreement. There is no intention,” he said.

The blockade on Gaza and the breakdown of relations with Fatah have created huge strains on the economy in Gaza. Since Fatah controls the budget from the West Bank, it has so far resisted making payments to security forces and other state employees in Gaza who were hired by Hamas since 2007.

As a result, Hamas is heavily dependent on support from abroad, including Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Iran. While Saudi and Iran are at odds, Zahar said Hamas was not taking sides.

“We are looking to have good relations with everybody,” he said. “We will not play any factor or element in the internal or external confrontation between these countries.”

(Editing by Hugh Lawson)

Israeli forces shoot dead three Palestinian assailants as violence continues

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Israeli security forces shot dead three Palestinian assailants in separate incidents in Jerusalem and the occupied West Bank on Friday, police and the military said, as a wave of heightened violence persisted into its fifth month.

In Jerusalem, a Palestinian man stabbed two police officers outside the walled Old City before they opened fire and killed him, police said.

A few hours later, in the West Bank, a Palestinian man tried to ram his car into a group of Israeli soldiers who then shot him dead, the military said.

A third Palestinian man was killed by Israeli soldiers in a clash elsewhere in the West Bank, the Palestinian Health Ministry said. An Israeli military spokeswoman said he was armed with an automatic weapon and fired on the troops during a riot.

Since October, stabbings, shootings and car rammings by Palestinians have killed 28 Israelis and a U.S. citizen. Israeli security forces have killed at least 167 Palestinians, 110 of whom Israel says were assailants, while most others were shot dead during violent anti-Israeli protests.

The bloodshed has raised concern of wider escalation a decade after the last Palestinian uprising subsided.

Briefing the U.N. Security Council on Thursday, Nickolay Mladenov, the U.N. envoy on Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking, said he was concerned the bloodshed may be entering “a new troubling phase”.

Mladenov called on both Israeli and Palestinian leaders to provide “a political horizon to their people” and reject incitement by what he called radicals in their own camps.

Tensions have been stoked by various factors including a dispute over Jerusalem’s al-Aqsa mosque compound and the failure of several rounds of peace talks to secure the Palestinians an independent state in Israeli-occupied territory.

Palestinian leaders have said that with no breakthrough on the horizon, desperate youngsters see no future ahead. Israel says young Palestinians are being incited to violence by their leaders and by Islamist groups calling for Israel’s destruction.

Security officials have also pointed to economic hardship and social media as playing a role in triggering attacks.

Many Palestinian attackers have been teenagers.

On Thursday two Palestinian 14-year-olds stabbed and killed an Israeli, who also had U.S. citizenship, in a supermarket in the West Bank before an armed civilian shot and wounded the teens.

“This horrific incident again underscores the need for all sides to reject violence, and urgently take steps to restore calm, reduce tensions, and bring an immediate end to the violence,” the U.S. State Department said.

(Additional reporting by Michelle Nichols in New York; Writing by Maayan Lubell; Editing by Alison Williams)

U.N. rights expert accuses Israel of excessive force against Palestinians

GENEVA (Reuters) – The U.N. human rights investigator for Gaza and the West Bank called on Israel on Thursday to investigate what he called excessive force used by Israeli security forces against Palestinians and to prosecute perpetrators.

Makarim Wibisono, United Nations special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories, also challenged Israeli authorities to charge or release all Palestinian prisoners being held under lengthy administrative detention, including children.

“The upsurge in violence is a grim reminder of the unsustainable human rights situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territory and the volatile environment it engenders,” he said in a final report to the Human Rights Council.

Israel, backed by its ally the United States, accuses the Geneva-based forum of bias against it.

Twenty-seven Israelis and a U.S. citizen have been killed since October in near-daily Palestinian attacks that have included stabbings, shootings and car-rammings. Israeli forces, for their part, have killed at least 157 Palestinians, 101 of them assailants, according to Israeli authorities.

The spokesman for Israel’s Foreign Ministry declined to give an immediate response, saying he was looking into Wibisono’s remarks.

Wibisono announced his resignation from the independent post last month, effective March 31, accusing Israel of reneging on its pledge to grant him access to Gaza and the West Bank.

Wibisino said any individual violence was unacceptable

He said the upsurge came against a backdrop of “illegal” Jewish settlements in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, construction of a wall, and Israel’s blockade of Gaza that amounted to a “stranglehold” and “collective punishment”.

Israel must address these issues to uphold international law and ensure protection for Palestinians, he said.

Israel captured the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem in the 1967 Middle East war and later annexed East Jerusalem, declaring it part of its eternal, indivisible capital, a move never recognised internationally.

Some 5,680 Palestinians were detained by Israel as of the end of October 2015, including hundreds of minors, Wibisono said, citing figures from the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem.

Regarding those under administrative detention, he said: “Hundreds of Palestinians being held, now including children, often under secret evidence, and for up to six-month terms that can be renewed indefinitely, is not consistent with international human rights standards.”

“The government of Israel should promptly charge or release all administrative detainees.”

(Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva; additional reporting by Dan Williams in Jerusalem; editing by Ralph Boulton)

Travel agency in isolated Gaza recalls the ‘golden’ 1950s

GAZA (Reuters) – Nabil Shurafa’s travel agency in Gaza was once packed with clients booking flights to London, Paris, New York or cities across the Arab world. These days, he’s lucky if anyone comes in, as so few people can get out.

The posters of the Eiffel Tower, the Statue of Liberty and a map of the world look out of place on the walls, given the sense of isolation that pervades Gaza, a narrow strip of land hemmed in by Israel on two sides, Egypt to the south and the blockaded Mediterranean to the west.

“Once borders are closed, things switch off,” said Shurafa with a sense of resignation. A plastic model of a passenger plane stands on his desk, next to the silent phones.

When Shurafa’s father opened the bureau in 1952, it quickly earned a reputation as a helpful and reliable agency.

Back then, Gaza was governed by Egypt and there was not much of a border to speak of. Gazans could book a plane ticket and take a four-hour bus or train to Cairo to catch their flight.

The agency had a close relationship with BOAC, the forerunner of British Airways, and Air France and is general sale agent for each. It remains a member of IATA, the International Air Transport Association.

“The era from 1952 to 1967 was a golden one,” Shurafa, 53, told Reuters. People used to travel to Gaza as well, at least until the 1967 Middle East war, when Israel captured Gaza from Egypt and the West Bank from Jordan.

“Gaza was like a duty-free zone, with Egyptians coming to buy goods brought by merchants from Lebanon,” he recalled.

There was also a boom in the late 1990s, after the Oslo peace accords between Israel and the Palestinians, and Gaza opened Yasser Arafat International Airport in 1998.

But the years since have seen a steady decline in business as Gaza has become more and more cut off from the world.

When the second Palestinian uprising erupted in 2000, the airport’s runway and control tower were bombed by Israel and it remains in ruins.

Since 2007, when the Islamist group Hamas seized control of the territory following a brief civil war with the Western-backed Fatah movement, entry to and exit from Gaza have become even more restricted, both by Egypt and by Israel.

LINKS TO THE WORLD

Israel does allow around 1,000 Gazans to cross into its territory every day, for work, medical treatment or other humanitarian reasons. But it is a far cry from the thousands that could pass through the vast border terminal Israel built in the mid-2000s, before Hamas took over.

Egypt meanwhile has kept its crossing with Gaza mostly closed over the past five years, citing security concerns and to put the squeeze on Hamas. Human rights groups say 95 percent of Gaza’s 1.95 million people cannot get out of the enclave.

Even those that are able to cross into Israel cannot easily travel from there. They need special dispensation to fly out of Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion airport or to travel to the West Bank and on to Jordan to catch a flight. Jordan, too, has started restricting visas for Palestinians from Gaza.

Every few months, Egypt lets around 3,000 Gazans leave via Rafah, but the arrangements are a lottery. The crossing stays open only for two or three days, so no one can be sure they will get across. They call Shurafa once they are over the border and the agency then scrambles to book them flights or hotels.

There are currently 15,000 Gazans who have registered requests to travel across Rafah, Palestinian officials say, including 3,000 who say they need medical treatment.

From 1994 to 2000, after Oslo and before the second intifada, Shurafa estimates his office sold 6,000 airline tickets a year. Last year, he sold 120. He’s had to let eight staff go and now mostly employs family to keep costs down. He seldom covers his $5,000 monthly rent and running costs.

Mhareb Al-Burai, who runs the rival Al-Batra tourism office, has faced similar problems. Rather than flights, his agency now focuses on trying to get visas for Dubai, Turkey and China.

“With Rafah largely closed, our main clients are businessmen and merchants, those who have valid permits to cross into Israel and from there travel to Jordan,” said the 64-year-old.

For Shurafa, the airline stickers on his glass front door may seem out of place, but he hasn’t given up.

“It may sound like satire to talk about a travel agency in a place like Gaza,” he said. “But someone has to have hope because this is a history we can’t abandon.”

(Editing by Luke Baker and Andrew Roche)