Abbas wins resumption of Western aid

---

RAMALLAH, Jun 19 (AFP): Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas won the lifting of a crippling Western aid freeze amid efforts to isolate Hamas in its Gaza enclave, where fears are mounting of a humanitarian crisis.
The United States and Europe restored direct aid to the Palestinians Monday in a show of support for Abbas, who set up an emergency government when his Islamist rivals seized power in Gaza after days of brutal bloodletting.
"We will not leave 1.5 million Palestinians at the hands of terrorist organisations," US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said of the impoverished Gaza Strip.
Rice said the United States was lifting its 15-month embargo on direct aid, as the European Union -- the biggest donor to the Palestinians -- normalised ties with the new government and resumed its own aid flows.
The moves came a day after Abbas swore in a new 12-member cabinet excluding the Islamists after sacking the three-month-old unity government headed by Hamas prime minister Ismail Haniya.
Hamas's seizure of Gaza after vicious street battles with loyalists of Abbas's secular Fatah that left more than 110 people dead in barely a week has driven a deep wedge in Palestinian society.
Abbas's government is based in his West Bank stronghold while Hamas is in control of Gaza, a tiny strip of land whose impoverished people rely on goods from outside but are now sealed off from the rest of the world by Israel.
The Palestinian Authority insisted it remains in full control, "administratively and morally," of both the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, but the divide has dimmed hopes of the creation of a future independent state.
The EU partially froze ties and suspended direct aid when Hamas swept to power last year after a shock win over Fatah in January 2006 elections. The United States also cut off all aid funnelled directly to the Palestinian government in a bid to prevent Western money ending up in Hamas coffers.
But the boycott deepened the desperate economic plight of Palestinians, particularly in Gaza, one of the most densely populated areas on the planet where 80 per cent of the population relies on aid.
Several hundred Palestinians are camping out in miserable conditions at the Erez border crossing with Israel, desperate to flee feared retribution after the deadly showdown and threatened shortages of basic supplies.