Mahmoud Barakat
22 July 2018•Update: 23 July 2018
By Said Amuri
JERUSALEM
Israel will open the Kerem Shalom border crossing – Gaza’s only commercial crossing – on Tuesday, Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman said Sunday.
In a statement, Lieberman said the border terminal will be reopened if the Gaza border remains calm.
"If today and tomorrow the situation continues as it was yesterday, then on Tuesday we will allow Kerem Shalom to return to normal activity, and the fishing zones will return to the same distances as before," he said.
"The key is quiet, calm, zero firebombs, zero friction on the fence and zero rockets or, God forbid, shooting,” Lieberman said.
On July 9, Israel closed the crossing to all goods except food and medicine. And on July 16, Israel reduced the fishing area to six maritime miles as part of a raft of sanctions imposed by Tel Aviv on the Gaza Strip in retaliation for incendiary kite and balloon attacks by Palestinian activists near the Gaza-Israel security fence.
On Friday, Israel and Palestinian resistance factions reached a cease-fire deal following an escalation in the blockaded Palestinian territory.
Since March, more than 140 Palestinians have been martyred – and thousands more injured – by Israeli army fire during protests against the decades-long Israeli occupation and an 11-year blockade, which has gutted the coastal territory’s economy and deprived its roughly two million inhabitants of basic commodities.
