GAZA CITY— Gaza reeled from power outages on Sunday
as Israel continued to seal off the Hamas-run territory
in retaliation for rocket fire, despite warnings that the
closure could spark a humanitarian crisis.
For the third consecutive day, border crossings
of the coastal strip where most of the 1.5 million
residents depend on aid remained shut after
Israel ordered the move amid an escalation of
violence between the army and Islamists.
The Israeli cabinet decided to keep the lockdown
in place for the time being at its weekly
government meeting on Sunday, officials said.
"The ministers discussed the ongoing
closure during the cabinet meeting, but decided
to keep up the pressure," a senior government
official told AFP.
With fuel among the dwindling supplies, Gaza's
sole power plant shut down one of its two
remaining working turbines early on Sunday
and was due to turn off the second one by
the end of the day, Gaza energy officials said.
"If we don't receive fuel we will have to stop
the last turbine this evening, shutting the plant
down completely," station director Rafiq Mliha told AFP.
"Such a stop in production will have grave
consequences for hospitals and water
cleaning stations."
The cutback comes amid the peak winter
demand for electricity and after seven months of
tightened restrictions on the movement of goods
and people in and out of the territory where the
Islamist Hamas seized power in June.
"This is a very fragile system that is suffering
from seven months of closure and every
additional blow is reverberating throughout
hospitals, water wells and homes in Gaza,"
said Sari Bashi, director of the GISHA
rights group.
Once the plant shuts down, Gaza will be receiving
only about half of its usual winter power demand of
240 megawatts, Bashi said.
The UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA)
warned that a shutdown of the station, which provides
a third of the territory's power including to its main
population centre of Gaza City, would have "
a devastating impact."
"Depriving people of such basics as water is
tantamount to depriving them of human dignity,
" UNRWA spokesman Christopher Gunness said.
"It is difficult to understand the logic of making
hundreds of thousands of people suffer quite
needlessly."
Israel's Defence Minister Ehud Barak ordered
the crossings into Gaza closed late Thursday,
saying the move was aimed at pressuring militants
inside to stop firing rockets and mortars into Israel
and that it would be reassessed.
"We cannot keep the border crossings open while
rockets fall on our towns and while Israelis posted
at these crossings are themselves targeted in these
attacks," a defence ministry spokesman said in
explaining the move.
On Sunday, Barak told the cabinet that
the army was "weakening the daily life in
Gaza."
"We are targeting the terror elements and we are
trying to show the international community that
we are exhausting all possible options before
Israel decides on a broad (military) operation,"
a senior government official quoted him as saying.
Israel has for months been launching air and
ground strikes inside Gaza aiming to halt militants
there from launching rockets and mortars into the
Jewish state, but has not been able to completely
stop the firings.
Violence between the army and Gaza militants
sharply escalated after an Israeli operation on
Tuesday killed 19 Palestinians, mostly gunmen,
in the deadliest single day in Gaza in more
than a year.
Since then, Israeli raids have killed 36 people,
most of them militants, and gunmen have
launched some 200 rockets and mortars into
Israel, lightly wounding at least 10 people.
Although most of the people killed by Israeli
troops in Gaza have been gunmen, civilians
including women and children have also been
increasingly caught in the crossfire.
The escalation has sparked international concern
and warnings that it may derail the recently revived
peace talks between the two sides.
On Saturday Palestinian prime minister Salam Fayyad called for
"international protection" for Gaza residents and criticised
anew the firing of rockets into Israel which he said "only
brought misforture... for our people."
Hasan Qwaider
0 Have Your Say!:
Post a Comment