Trucks with food supplies enter Gaza through Kerem Shalom
Trucks with food supplies enter Gaza through Kerem ShalomFlash 90

For the first time since 2007, Israel will allow Gaza to export ironware, furniture and textiles to Israel in a bid to improve the Gazan economy, the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT), said Monday, according to a report in Haaretz.

The new rules will go into effect October 7 with the aim of “improving the Gaza economy and reducing unemployment,” said the office.

The latest easing of exports follows a decision in March to allow Gaza growers to sell tomatoes and eggplant in Israel for consumers keeping the shmita, year prohibition on domestically grown produce.

Gaza’s Hamas terrorist rulers continuously claim that Israel is imposing a “siege” on Gaza, despite the fact that Israel continues to transfer humanitarian aid, goods and construction materials into the region, and has continued to do so despite ongoing rocket fire from Gaza on southern Israel.

In April, Israel allowed 14,000 tons of building material into Gaza, despite the fact that Hamas is using such materials to rapidly rebuild its terror tunnels to attack Israel.

In May, Israeli authorities opened the Kerem Shalom crossing into Gaza and allowed 700 truckloads of goods to enter the region, even as the UN’s envoy to the Middle East, Nickolay Mladenov, blamed Israel’s “blockade” of Gaza for the slow pace of the region’s reconstruction following Operation Protective Edge last summer.

(Arutz Sheva’s North American desk is keeping you updated until the start of Yom Kippur in New York. The time posted automatically on all Arutz Sheva articles, however, is Israeli time.)