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Is the Abbas-Hamas conflict hindering Gaza reconstruction?

In his speech to the European Parliament, Israeli President Reuven Rivlin called to reconstruct Gaza, warning that Gaza residents are being held hostage by Hamas.
Palestinian woman Jihan Abu Muhsen collects bricks for sale with her son Mohammad from the ruins of a house destroyed during the 2014 war in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip March 8, 2016. Abu Muhsen gathers bricks from the sites of demolished buildings and sells them to recycling factories. She earns around 20 shekels ($5) a day and her 10-year-old son Mohammad helps her when he is not at school. REUTERS/Ibraheem Abu Mustafa    SEARCH "GAZA BRICK" FOR THIS STORY. SEARCH "THE WIDER IMAGE" FOR ALL STOR
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Israeli President Reuven Rivlin called for the rebuilding of the Gaza Strip June 22. It wasn’t the first time he’s done that either. Rivlin uses almost every opportunity to argue that rebuilding Gaza is an Israeli interest. He holds stubbornly to the position that resolving what he calls the human tragedy there is critical. In the past, these comments have aroused the ire of right-wing activists.

It is true that after Operation Protective Edge in 2014, the international community promised $5.4 billion to rebuild Gaza’s infrastructures destroyed during the military operation. This aid project, funded mainly by the European Union and the United States, should have spared the Gaza Strip from total collapse. In order to prevent the financial aid from ending up in the hands of Hamas, it was decided to create a joint mechanism to oversee the project, involving Israel, the Palestinian Authority (PA) and the United Nations.

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