Erez (Palestinian Territories) (AFP)

In front of tents, on a construction site, volunteers of a Christian American NGO pose all smile for a selfie. Their goal: to set up a clinic in Gaza, backed by the Israeli barrier, a project that raises many suspicions.

In fact, this pregnant clinic, literally planted at a stone's throw from the Israeli border crossing at Erez, with its grid corridor linking the rest of the world to Gaza, has all the papers to operate.

Its presence is part of a rare project supported by both Israel and Hamas Islamists, who control the Gaza Strip, a Palestinian enclave of two million people that is three times the size of Paris.

But Gaza has nothing of the Champs-Elysees and the clinic nothing of the hospital of the Salpetriere. The infrastructure under construction, which Gazans call the "American Hospital", is funded by Friend Ships, a Christian NGO in Louisiana, in the southern United States, little known in the world of humanitarian organizations in hostile areas.

The organization, which had already set up a tents clinic on the side of the disputed border with Syria that the Israelis consider theirs, refused requests for talks with AFP.

But the organization's website says that once operational, the Gaza clinic will offer telemedicine consultations with specialists abroad and offer treatments for cancer and post-traumatic stress disorder.

"We will offer services to the population four days a week and those who want to go sightseeing you will have the opportunity to spend three days to get to know Israel," said the website of the organization to Christian volunteers.

"This is a chance to learn more about the history of the region and be part of the work God is doing here today," adds the Facebook page, full of photos of smiling young volunteers, erecting tents on the Gaza soil.

- Blessed by Hamas -

Hamas, which does not officially recognize the Jewish state, and Israel have waged three wars since 2008, the last in 2014, and armed exchanges remain relatively common despite a truce between the two camps under the aegis of Egypt, the UN and Qatar.

On site in Gaza, hospitals often remain overwhelmed and lacking in medicine and equipment, some being barred from entering the enclave under the Israeli blockade imposed for more than a decade - Israel fears seeing some resources diverted by Hamas.

The clinic, managed by an American organization and backed by the Israeli fence, could help facilitate the importation of drugs, reassuring Israel of the risk of seeing the aid siphoned off by the armed Islamist movement, which is on the blacklist of "terrorist organizations" in the United States.

On the Hamas side, we make an important distinction. "The American hospital is run by an American charity, it has nothing to do with the US government," Khalil al-Hayya, Hamas' N.2 in the Gaza Strip, recently noted.

"We will evaluate the work of this hospital and the services it offers to the population, and if the level is not at the rendezvous, we will work to close it," he added.

A source at the Ministry of Health in Gaza told AFP that the first equipment had arrived there in September, and assured that he would supervise the work of the clinic.

- Clan Wars -

But several humanitarian sources told AFP that this clinic had not been coordinated with the UN or humanitarian agencies working in Gaza.

"What Gaza needs is money to pay for medical staff, equipment and medicine, not a new clinic," a humanitarian critic says, adding that the location of Friend's future operations is strange. Ships.

While the Islamist movement has so far given its blessing to the project, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, whose secular Fatah movement controls the West Bank and has heated relations with Hamas, blasted him.

"Hamas is committing a crime against the Palestinian cause and the Palestinian people by approving this hospital," said Abbas, who says he suspects, without evidence, that the clinic actually hides a US base.

For Mukhaimer Abu Saida, a professor of political science at al-Azhar University in Gaza, the clinic remains tangible proof of the truce with Israel and will offer an alternative to Gazans who do not get permission to leave the enclave to seek refuge. seek treatment.

But Mahmoud Abbas fears to be bypassed, and to see the United States and Israel further divide the Palestinians by recognizing Hamas' authority over Gaza, he said.

© 2019 AFP