GAZA CITY: Finnish Foreign Minister Alexander Stubb called for the further lifting of movement restrictions on the Gaza Strip during a visit to the territory on Thursday.
Stubb joined a small group of envoys who have visited the Hamas-ruled territory this year, including UN chief Ban Ki-Moon and the European Union’s top diplomat, Catherine Ashton.
"We must continue to ease the partial blockade, we must continue to bring in humanitarian aid, we must continue commercial activity and hopefully also exports," he told reporters in Gaza City after meeting with UN officials.
He also echoed calls for halting rocket attacks from the territory and demanded the release of Gilad Shalit, an Israeli soldier captured by Hamas and other Gaza militants in a deadly cross-border raid in June 2006.
Israel and Egypt imposed closures on the territory following Shalit’s capture and tightened them a year later when the Islamist Hamas movement — sworn to Israel’s destruction — seized power.
Israel began to ease the restrictions earlier this year and started allowing in all purely civilian goods during the international outcry that followed its deadly May 31 raid on a Gaza-bound aid fleet.
Stubb called on EU and other foreign ministers to visit the impoverished territory "to see what the situation is on the ground."
"You can only be struck personally with a sense of despair once you cross the border, when you see all the rubble, when you see all the poverty."
Stubb’s visit coincides with a regional tour by Finnish President Tarja Halonen, who has met with Israeli officials this week and was to visit Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas in the West Bank later on Thursday.
