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GAZA (Reuters) – 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 Gaza border largely closed, bolstering Israel’s embargo, since Hamas, which won a 2006 election, seized sole control of the Gaza Strip in a 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 a raid 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.”

Naeem 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.”

BLOCKADE DISCUSSIONS

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu held talks on Friday with Middle East envoy Tony Blair on the blockade.

Echoing an Israeli statement after that meeting, Netanyahu told reporters on Sunday Israel would continue discussions with the international community to prevent weapons and military equipment from reaching Gaza and to allow in humanitarian aid, an apparent signal it was open to revising blockade procedures.

Amid an international outcry over the bloodshed in the flotilla raid, Israel has faced mounting pressure to ease or lift a blockade critics have described as collective punishment.

Meeting on Sunday with members of his Likud party, Netanyahu said a retired Israeli Supreme Court justice, Jacob Turkel, would head a committee that Israel intends to establish to investigate the raid on the flotilla, officials said.

Pending the outcome of consultations with the United States, Israel has not made any formal announcement of the composition of the committee, which Israeli officials said would likely include foreign observers.

Washington has backed a U.N. Security Council statement that called for a “prompt, impartial, credible and transparent investigation, conforming to international standards” into the Israeli naval interception.

Israel has rejected any external, international board of inquiry, saying it had a right to launch an investigation on its own.

(Editing by Elizabeth Fullerton)