Eight-year-old post arrives for Palestinians in the West Bank after Israeli delay

Eight years’ worth of undelivered letters and packages are finally arriving through Palestinian letterboxes after being held up by Israel on security grounds.

Postal service workers at a sorting centre in Jericho in the occupied West Bank have been working around the clock to sift through the backlog since around 10 tons of post was released to the Palestinian Authority (PA) on Monday in a one-off deal.

Letters, gifts, medicines, packages ordered online and even a wheelchair intended for a recipient in Gaza were among the items delivered from Jordan, some of it dating back to 2010.

Photos posted on the Palestinian postal service’s website showed rooms filled with hundreds of blue and white post bags, many packed on top of each other.

Some of the goods were badly damaged, a statement from Palestinian officials said, and would be delivered with a note saying Israeli authorities had delivered them in that condition.

All goods intended for the West Bank and Gaza are controlled by Israel, and the Israeli postal service handles mail. Delays and blockages – especially for the militant Hamas controlled Gaza Strip – are common.

Ramadan Ghazawi of the Jericho post office, told AFP the deluge of post appeared to have been blocked on both security and administrative grounds. Postal workers are hopeful the letters and packages will be sorted within the next two weeks.

In 2016, an agreement was reached to allow Palestinians to receive international mail without it first being handled by Israel, but in a statement on Tuesday, PA communications minister Allam Moussa accused Israel of dragging its feet on implementing the deal, which continued to cost the Palestinian economy.

Cogat, the Israeli military body responsible for civilian coordination in the territories, said the agreement had not yet fully come into force and that this week’s one-off delivery was a confidence-building measure.

Israel has long maintained that international mail is promptly delivered to the PA, a claim Palestinian officials have challenged.