Israel buys first Gaza produce in eight years

posted on: Mar 14, 2015

Israel imported its first fruit and vegetables from the Gaza Strip in almost eight years on Thursday, in a partial easing of an economic blockade maintained since the Islamist group Hamas seized control of the Palestinian territory.

Twenty-seven metric tons of tomatoes and five tons of eggplants were trucked across the border under an Israeli plan to bring in around 1,200 tons of produce a month. The Palestinians welcomed the move, though the scale fell short of the some 3,300 tons they said they had previously exported to Israel each month.

Israel has faced international calls to ease the blockade since a war with Hamas last year, the second in six years, that caused heavy devastation in the Gaza Strip and left more than 100,000 of its population of 1.8 million homeless.

Source: www.haaretz.com