MIDEAST ISRAEL PALESTINIANS
Palestinian customs workers check trucks loaded with shoes and clothes that arrived in Rafah from Israel through the Kerem Shalom border crossing bet...
Palestinian customs workers check trucks loaded with shoes and clothes that arrived in Rafah from Israel through the Kerem Shalom border crossing between Israel and the Gaza Strip, Sunday, April 4, 2010. Israel has allowed a shipment of clothes and shoes into the Gaza Strip for the first time since Hamas took over the territory in 2007, Palestinian sources said. (AP Photo/Eyad Baba)
MIDEAST ISRAEL PALESTINIANS
Palestinian customs workers check trucks loaded with shoes and clothes that arrived in Rafah from Israel through the Kerem Shalom border crossing bet...
Palestinian customs workers check trucks loaded with shoes and clothes that arrived in Rafah from Israel through the Kerem Shalom border crossing between Israel and the Gaza Strip, Sunday, April 4, 2010. Israel has allowed a shipment of clothes and shoes into the Gaza Strip for the first time since Hamas took over the territory in 2007, Palestinian sources said. (AP Photo/Eyad Baba)
A Gaza border official says Israel has allowed a commercial shipment of shoes and clothes into the Palestinian territory for the first time since 2007.
Raed Fattouh says 10 trucks ferrying shoes and clothes entered the Hamas-run strip on Sunday. He says many of the goods were damaged after more than two years in storage.
It was the first non-humanitarian shipment of such items, meant for Gaza's merchants and their stores.
An Israeli army spokesman says Israel allows such items into Gaza occasionally as part of aid shipments coordinated with the U.N.
Gaza has been under a strict Israeli and Egyptian blockade since Hamas seized control of the area. There are shortages of many basic goods and merchants rely on smuggling tunnels under the Egyptian border.
