Ramallah: Robert Serry, key UN Middle East envoy, is seeking to deploy hundreds of international monitors in the Gaza Strip.
According to a report in Israeli daily Haaretz, between 250 and 500 monitors would be based at construction sites, at sites used to store construction materials or at locations where heavy mechanical equipment (such as bulldozers) are stored.
Their role will be to ensure the construction materials are not used for purposes other than the reconstruction.
Haaretz has cited a senior official as claiming the Israeli government sought UN monitors as it regards them as “a relatively reliable entity to supervise and report from the Strip.”
Meanwhile, Hamas’s position on this issue is still not clear. The group does not want foreign elements in Gaza that could monitor and restrict its activities. But at the same time it understands that without the monitors, Israel will not allow rebuilding Gaza at all.
A Hamas official in the West Bank said that the group does not accept the idea of monitors in principle, perceiving international troops or monitors as equivalent to the enemy’s armed forces. The official told Gulf News that the Islamist movement is usually suspicious about the kind of work such monitors would do in the Strip.
The official recalled cases in which international journalists and human rights activists had entered Gaza and their work proved later to involve gathering of information.
