JERUSALEM — The United States will probably donate more than $900 million for the reconstruction of Gaza, a U.S. official said Monday, as Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton prepared to attend a donors conference for the war-ravaged territory next week.
Israeli and Palestinian officials said earlier Monday that Clinton will visit Israel and the West Bank during the first week of March for her first trip to the region as America’s top diplomat.
A U.S. official in the United States said the Obama administration’s donation to the Palestinian Authority will help Gaza recover from Israel’s offensive against Hamas last month.
The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the donation had not received final approval, said the exact amount was still to be determined.
The official added that the aid would not go to Hamas.
Meanwhile Monday, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert dismissed Israel’s top negotiator in Gaza truce talks for publicly criticizing his demand that Palestinian militants hand over a captured Israeli soldier before any deal is clinched, officials said.
The move threatens to roil the talks just weeks before Olmert is succeeded by the hawkish Benjamin Netanyahu, who wants Gaza’s Hamas rulers toppled and who probably would take a tougher line in the Egyptian-brokered truce negotiations.
Olmert abruptly announced last week that Israel would not reopen Gaza’s long-blockaded borders — the main Israeli concession sought by Hamas — until Hamas-affiliated militants freed Sgt. Gilad Schalit, who was seized in a June 2006 cross-border raid.
Amos Gilad, the fired negotiator, opposed linking the truce deal with Schalit and criticized Olmert’s strategy in an interview last week with the Israeli newspaper Maariv. After Gilad refused to apologize, Olmert gave him the boot, aides said Monday.
In related news, al-Qaeda’s No. 2 leader warned Palestinians in Gaza against accepting a truce with Israel in an audio message posted on extremist websites, an Internet monitoring service said.
Osama bin Laden’s deputy, the Egyptian-born Ayman Al-Zawahri, described the truce negotiations as “plots and conspiracies” to defeat the Palestinians.
