Arab League chief Amr Moussa visited the Gaza Strip on Sunday, the highest Arab official to do so since its seizure by Hamas Islamists in 2007, and called for an end to Israel's blockade of the Palestinian territory.                                             
Moussa crossed into the enclave from Egypt, two weeks after Israel's deadly interception of a Gaza aid flotilla.                          
"This blockade...must be lifted and must be broken and the Arab League decision is very clear in this regard," Moussa said.            
Egypt had kept its border with Gaza largely closed, bolstering Israel's embargo, since Hamas's war with Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah faction three years ago.                 
But Cairo reopened its Rafah crossing with the territory after Israeli marines killed nine pro-Palestinian Turkish activists during violent confrontations on a Turkish-flagged vessel in the aid convoy on May 31.                                             
Palestinian and Arab League officials said Moussa's visit was also aimed at giving momentum to reconciliation talks between Hamas and Fatah that Egypt has sponsored but which have failed to bridge deep mistrust between the two rivals.                           
In what appeared to be a bid to avoid any impression of Arab League recognition of Hamas's Gaza takeover, Moussa planned to meet Ismail Haniyeh, head of the Hamas government, in his home rather than in his office, officials said.                                At a joint news conference with Moussa, Hamas health minister Basim Naeem said the visit indicated that "the boycott between Gaza and the Arab nation was broken".                                            Naeen said Hamas also hoped the trip would "be the start of a practical plan to lift the (Israeli) blockade of Gaza once and for all, in a complete and comprehensive way".                                            On Friday, Israel said it wanted to enlist global support to improve the flow of civilian goods to the Gaza Strip, while seeing to it that weapons did not reach the territory.                                            Amid an international outcry over the bloodshed in the flotilla raid, Israel faced mounting pressure to ease or lift a blockade that critics have described as collective punishment.