JERUSALEM, June 17 (Reuters) - Israel said on Thursday it was easing a land blockade of the Gaza Strip that drew international criticism after its deadly raid on an aid flotilla bound for the Hamas-run territory.
A new Israeli-approved product list included all food items, toys, stationery, kitchen utensils, mattresses and towels, said Raed Fattouh, the Palestinian coordinator of supplies to Gaza.
But Israel maintained its sea blockade, a ban on exports from the coastal strip and a prohibition against the commercial import of building materials, vital to widescale reconstruction after the December 2008-January 2009 Gaza war.
Hamas, an Islamist group locked in conflict with Israel, dismissed the new measures as trivial and "media propaganda".
"What is needed is a complete lifting of the blockade. Goods and people must be free to enter and leave. Gaza especially needs construction material, which must be allowed to come in without restrictions," said Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri.
An Israeli statement, issued after a security cabinet meeting, said "it was agreed to liberalise the system by which civilian goods enter Gaza (and) expand the inflow of materials for civilian projects that are under international supervision".
Israel has said unrestricted import of cement and steel could lead to Hamas Islamists seizing the material and using it to rebuild military infrastructure. It already allows in limited quantities of construction material for U.N. projects.
The announcement did not specify how procedures for the import of commercial goods would change or list any specific products, saying only that cabinet ministers would decide in the coming days how to implement the revised policy.
But it noted "existing security procedures to prevent the inflow of weapons and war materials" would continue, signalling the sea blockade that Israel says is essential to prevent weapons smuggling to Hamas would not be lifted.
Up to 1.5 million people live in Gaza, of whom about 1 million depend to some extent on regular supplies of U.N. and other foreign aid brought in overland after Israeli inspection.
"COUNTERPRODUCTIVE"
Israel faced a cavalcade of international calls to ease or lift its Gaza embargo following the killing by Israeli commandos of nine pro-Palestinian Turkish activists during the interception at sea of an an aid convoy on May 31.
Israeli leaders said the troops acted in self-defence after being swarmed by activists who attacked them. Once-close Muslim ally Turkey accused Israel of "state terrorism".
Commenting on the revised embargo, a Turkish Foreign Ministry official said Ankara wanted to evaluate the Israeli move and see how it would be implemented.
"However, our attitude on the issue is obvious, we expect that the blockade be lifted altogether," the official told Reuters.
Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini told reporters in Rome that Israel "has understood that a blockade strategy is counterproductive", echoing Israeli and foreign critics of the embargo who have said it only rallies Gaza residents around Hamas.
European diplomats had said a plan drawn up in coordination with Middle East envoy Tony Blair called for Israel to move from a policy of banning the entry of many commercial goods, except a few designated items, to accepting all products and prohibiting only those proscribed on a list.
Blair represents the Quartet of international powers — the United States, European Union, United Nations and Russia — seeking Middle East peace. He held talks last week with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
The security cabinet’s deliberations began on Wednesday and coincided with another visit to Israel and the Palestinian territories by U.S. Middle East envoy George Mitchell.
Mitchell is mediating indirect talks between Israel and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’s Palestinian Authority, which holds sway only in the West Bank after the Fatah movement lost control of Gaza to rival Hamas in a brief war in 2007.
"This is a period in which we urge all concerned to exercise restraint and to avoid confrontation," Mitchell told reporters at the start of a meeting in Jerusalem with Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak. Neither commented on the embargo issue.
Israel imposed the blockade soon after Hamas, which has rejected Western calls to recognise its right to exist, won a Palestinian election in 2006. Restrictions were tightened after Hamas’s Gaza takeover.
A network of smuggling tunnels under the Gaza Strip’s border with Egypt keeps the enclave supplied with a variety of black market commercial goods. Hamas maintains its own tunnels, which Israel says are also used for weapons smuggling.
Humanitarian aid shipments are transferred regularly via border crossings with Israel, but international aid groups say more supplies are needed.
