Arab League chief Amr Mussa will make a groundbreaking "solidarity" visit to the Israeli-blockaded Gaza Strip next week, top aide Hisham Yussef told AFP on Monday.
The head of the 22-member pan-Arab organisation "will visit the Gaza Strip next week -- the first trip of its kind by an Arab League secretary general," Yussef said.
The trip is aimed at "showing solidarity with the Palestinian people in the face of the blockade and (express) the need to step up inter-Palestinian reconciliation," he added.
Yussef did not specify when the visit would take place but Arab League sources said it could happen on June 14 or 15.
The Islamist Hamas movement that runs the impoverished Gaza said on Sunday that Mussa would visit the Palestinian territory "in the coming days."
Gaza has been under a crippling blockade since militants based in the territory captured a soldier in a deadly cross-border raid in 2006 and Israel tightened its grip after Hamas seized control of the enclave in June 2007.
Egypt, where the Arab League is based, has also usually kept its Rafah crossing with Gaza shut but it reopened it last week after a deadly Israeli raid on an international aid flotilla killed nine Turkish activists.
Israeli naval forces intercepted another aid ship, the Rachel Corrie, on Saturday as it tried to reach the Gaza Strip. It said on Monday that all the activists on board that ship have been deported.
Mussa has contacted both Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas and the exile leader of Hamas Khaled Meshaal amid efforts to seal reconciliation between the two sides, Yussef said, adding much of his visit would be devoted to help both sides bridge their differences.
