MP Mansour: Closure of Shujaia crossing, iron wall is a death sentence to Palestinians.

Palestinian MP Mona Mansour has condemned the Israeli decision to close the Shujaia crossing (Nahal Oz) with Gaza once and for all, describing it as "repressive".

 In a press release on Monday, January 4, Mansour said that the Israeli occupation authority (IOA) adopts new measures daily to repress the Gaza Strip indicating that the closure of Shujaia crossing is one of those measures." The concurrence of the closure of the crossing with the building of the iron wall on Egypt’s part has transformed Gaza into a prison enclosed by walls and closed crossings", she said. Mansour added that such measures were equivalent to capital punishment against the Gazans. The lawmaker asked for serious moves by human rights groups and the world community to end the Gaza siege.

On his part, Ziad Al-Zaza, the deputy premier and national economy minister in Gaza, described the Israeli closure of the crossing as "terrorist and arbitrary". He asserted that the closing of the crossing, which he stressed was practically closed since last October, would negatively affect the economic activities in the Gazan Strip.

Independent MP Jamal Al-Khodari, head of the popular anti siege committee, said that the closure only tightened the economic blockade on the struggling Strip. He highlighted that the IOA was planning to merge the Gaza crossings, which   only operated partly over the past four years. The plan was to merge them into one crossing instead of expanding and opening them fully.

Raed Fattuh, the coordinator for entry of goods into Gaza, revealed that the IOA decided to close the crossing permanently for "security reasons".