GAZA CITY, June 18 (IslamOnline.net) - Palestinian businessmen accused Israel of attempting to paralyze the already- shattered Palestinian economy by closing the main commercial crossing into Gaza Strip.

Israeli occupation forces have closed the four-kilometer Al-Muntar crossing, an economic lifeline for transporting 95 per cent of the strip’s exports and imports on a daily basis, for over three months now.

"The closure incurred huge losses on Palestinian businesses," Mohamed Al-Yazegi, the chairman of the Palestinian Businessmen Society, lamented.

Al-Yazegi said 180 trucks loaded with products worth millions of dollars have been stuck at the border point for several weeks. He complained that some of the goods they carry were spoilt and others were looted.

With the lack of raw materials, factories in the Gaza Strip have been closed, with jobless lines getting longer and former employees struggling to make ends meet.

"More than 100,000 construction workers lost their jobs, and 60,000 others became jobless after their exports of cloth products were halted due to the (Israeli) choking measure."

Farmers also bore the brunt, as prices of citrus and orange have sharply fallen, in light of the fact that both products could no longer be exported and large amounts of them even turned rotten.

The crossing includes an industrial estate on the Palestinian side, much to add to its value as a vehicle for the Palestinians’ trade exchange.

Although the Palestinians met all Israeli security demands, Yazegi said, the occupation forces have kept their punitive measures at the crossing.

The crossing has two parts divided by an eight meter-long cement wall topped by electronic wires. There are 30 electronic gates all controlled by the Israeli forces.

But leading Palestinian businessmen said the Israeli army measures were slapped rather to allow the access of Israeli-only products into the Gaza Strip regardless of their quality.

"They do not allow key products necessary for our economy into the strip. They do not want our factories to go on steam, which forces us to resort to their rotten vegetables, consumable only to animals".

"The Palestinian Authority is too helpless to prevent the entry of Israeli products into Gaza, as Israel could shut down the Muntar crossing completely in consequence".

For Nabil Farag, the director of Al-Muntar crossing, its closure is rather meant to hobble the whole Palestinian economy.

"It is a means to pressure Palestinians, paralyze their economy and incur so heavy devastating losses" on the West Bank and Gaza Strip, said Farag.

Nagi Al-Battah, the director of a biscuits company in Gaza highlighted the pains and hardships Palestinian traders suffer due to Israeli bans on materials used in manufacturing the goods.

More than one million people live in the Gaza Strip, whose cities and villages come under almost-daily incursions by Israeli occupation forces.

According to 2002 U.N. statistics, unemployment increased to 50% in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and that 70% of Gaza Strip inhabitants now live in poverty, defined as per capita consumption of less than $2 a day. The poverty rate was 23% in 1997, and 20% in 1990.

In September the same year, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) annual report on the occupied territories said that the Palestinian economy was experiencing "de-development".

The participants highlighted that the Palestinian economy is regularly disrupted by roadblocks, curfews, bulldozing of homes and farms, destruction of wells and confiscation of land to build new (illegal) Jewish settlements, in violation of international law.

UNCTAD found that since September 28, 2000, when the Intifada against Israeli occupation began, gross domestic product had fallen by more than half, unemployment had tripled and more than two-thirds of households were living below the poverty line.