A senior Israeli minister is seeking to win cabinet backing for an ambitious $5bn (£3.4bn) plan to ease the economic blockade of Gaza with an artificial island linked to the territory by a secure three-mile bridge.
Transport and intelligence minister Yisrael Katz’s argument for the island, which would include a seaport and possibly even an airport, is that it would restore Gaza’s links with the outside world without jeopardising Israeli security.
Access via the bridge could be tightly controlled by Israel or an Israel-approved international force.
Hamas has long demanded a Gaza seaport in return for a long-term truce, but ministers say this could be used to import weapons.
Katz, whose department this week released an image of the putative 8 sq km (3 sq mile) island, said: “I do not think it is right to lock up 2 million people without any connection to the world. Israel has no interest to make life harder for the population there. But because of security concerns we can’t build an airport or seaport in Gaza.”
Though Katz is a prominent minister in the Likud party of prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu, the proposal has yet to win formal backing from Israel’s security cabinet.
Netanyahu’s office declined further comment on Wednesday. Nor is it clear how willing international donors, who by the end of March had disbursed only 40% of the $3.5bn pledged to Gaza after the 2014 war, would be to help with funding.
There is some scepticism elsewhere in government over whether the project’s security could be guaranteed while Hamas controls Gaza. Other critics argue that it would be cheaper to allow greatly increased exports to Gaza’s traditional markets in Israel and the West Bank.
Turkey is soon expected to announce a normalisation of relations with Israel after watering down its demand for an end to the blockade. Instead, a so far unspecified amount of Turkish aid for Gaza is expected to be admitted through Israel’s Ashdod port.
Husam Zomlot, an official in Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah faction, has said Katz’s “dubious” proposal could spell “the final severing of Gaza” from the West Bank.
