Palestinian traders and importers said Monday they suffered heavy losses due to a massive fire that broke out several days ago in a warehouse in southern Israel, where their goods, supposed to be sent to the Gaza Strip soon, are stored.
Gaza traders and merchants told Xinhua that the massive fire destroyed the entire warehouse in the area of Moshav Shuva in Negev in southern Israel, adding "the losses were estimated with a value of seven million U.S. dollars."
Ra'ed Fattouh, chief of coordinating goods allowance with Israel through Gaza Strip's border crossing points, told Xinhua that the goods that Israel is holding into the warehouse "were supposed to be shipped to the Gaza Strip within the coming few days."
Israel had opened an investigation to know the circumstances of the incident, according to Fattouh, recalling another similar incident which occurred in April 2009 in another warehouse east of Kerem Shalom border crossing point near the borders between southeast Gaza Strip and Israel.
The Gaza-based Chamber of Commerce condemned in a statement sent to Xinhua the incidents of burning warehouses with goods of traders and importers due to be shipped to the Gaza Strip, saying "this would increase the suffering of the Gaza Strip merchants and businessmen."
Israel has been imposing a tight blockade on the Gaza Strip since Islamic Hamas movement seized control of the enclave by force in June 2007. Israel afterwards considered the Gaza Strip a hostile entity and only opened the borders crossing points for humanitarian aid.
"53 Gaza Strip traders and importers were damaged after the warehouse in southern Israel was burned," said the Chamber of Commerce statement.
"Their suffering is not only stemming out of such incidents, but it also stems out from the unfair tight siege imposed by Israel on the Gaza Strip."
The merchants and traders said that the damaged goods, which were totally burnt, include food products, engine oils, photocopy papers, kitchens tools and other kinds of products. They urged the international organizations to help them ending their suffering.
Meanwhile, Hatem Oweida, an official in the Ministry of Economy in the deposed government of Hamas, said that there are hundreds of traders, importers and businessmen who "have lots of goods and products they imported from several countries which are still held in Israeli warehouses."
"Israel is holding these goods into warehouses owned by private sector Israeli companies," said Oweida, adding "the regular conditions of storing these goods, mainly food products, are not proper, where huge amounts of stored goods are spoiled."
Israel controls all the crossing points on the borders with the Gaza Strip, which has a population of 1.5 million people, living in poor living conditions under a tight Israeli blockade. Palestinian economical experts said the Israeli blockade had badly damaged all the aspects of life in the enclave.
Within the past two years, Israel has eased the tight blockade and gradually allowed some kinds of products following international pressure on the Jewish state.
Fattouh said, before the blockade, 400 different kinds of goods were allowed, adding "now Israel only allows 60 kinds of goods."
Gaza Strip traders said that even the goods that Israel is currently allowing into the Gaza Strip "are not fairly enough to bring the Gaza Strip back to a normal life." The Palestinians in the enclave need construction and industrial raw materials to rebuild what had been destroyed in the enclave.
Israel claims that some of the products, which are not allowed into the Gaza Strip, are used to manufacture weapons and rockets that the militants are firing from time to time at southern Israel. Hamas, which rules the Gaza Strip, denied the Israeli claims.
"The Israeli unfair siege aims at squeezing Hamas and weakening the Palestinian economy in order to undermine the movement's rule of the Gaza Strip," said Hamas, which allowed the Palestinians to dig hundreds of tunnels under Gaza-Egypt borders to defy the Israeli blockade.
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