Arab ministers to visit Gaza, Turkey seeks air corridor

CAIRO: A delegation of Arab foreign ministers, including those of Egypt and Jordan, will visit Gaza “soon” in a show of support for Palestinians, Arab League chief Nabil Al-Arabi said Wednesday.
The ministers will also assess reconstruction needs in the battered enclave after a nearly month-long war between Israel and Hamas, Arabi said.
“An Arab ministerial delegation will go to Gaza soon in solidarity,” he told reporters.
The delegation, which is expected to expand, so far includes the foreign ministers of Egypt, Kuwait, Jordan and Morocco, as well as Arabi himself.
A 72-hour cease-fire took hold on Tuesday in the conflict, which is expected to cost the territory up to $6 billion (4.5 billion euros) in damage, said Palestinian deputy economy minister Taysir Amro in Ramallah.
A more precise assessment would be carried out once calm returns permanently to the overpopulated sliver of territory where more than 1,850 people were killed and nearly half a million displaced, he said.
On the second day of the truce, Turkey said it has began talks with Israel and Egypt about establishing an air corridor to provide humanitarian aid to Gaza and evacuate potentially thousands of injured Palestinians for treatment in Turkey.
“Yesterday I spoke with (Palestinian) President Abbas and we want to get the injured people, thousands of them. They need urgent medical therapy, and we have already allocated places in our hospitals for them,” Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu told Reuters in an interview.
“We are talking with both Egypt and Israel to have an air bridge to send humanitarian assistance ... If permission is given, our air ambulances will be carrying these passengers.”
Meanwhile, France and Britain proposed reactivating a European Union mission to reopen the Rafah crossing on the Egypt-Gaza border to help stabilize the Palestinian enclave after a month-long war, a German diplomatic source said on Wednesday.
The source said German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier and counterparts in France and Britain favored restoring the crossing that is the main window to the world for isolated Gaza’s 1.7 million Palestinians.
A two-day-old Gaza cease-fire was holding on Wednesday as Egyptian mediators pursued talks with Israeli and Palestinian envoys on an enduring end to a war in which Israeli shelling wrecked large parts of the Islamist Hamas-dominated territory.