The Hamas-affiliated Palestinian Media Center quoted Israeli National Radio as reporting that the US had halted funding for the wall currently being built along Egypt’s 14-kilometer border with the Gaza Strip and recalled American engineers working on the project.
According to the center, the US canceled US$500 million that had been initially allocated for the wall, deciding instead to grant the US-backed Palestinian Fatah movement US$400 million following a recent visit to the US by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.
The center also quoted American engineers as saying that Palestinian resistance movement Hamas–which has governed the besieged Gaza Strip since 2007–had succeeded in thwarting the project.
Emad Gad, Egyptian expert on Israeli affairs at the semi-official Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies, for his part, cast doubt on the news. “It sounds like it might have been fabricated by Hamas,” he said.
In a related development, Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa reportedly called Hamas leaders Ismail Haniya and Khaled Meshaal to discuss recent attempts by the league to promote inter-Palestinian reconciliation.
Translated from the Arabic Edition.
