Israel refused to reopen crossings or allow crucial fuel supplies into Gaza Monday, holding firm in its campaign to keep Palestinian rocket fire at bay and prompting fears of a humanitarian crisis.
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert insisted he would not allow a humanitarian crisis to unfold, but also warned that Gaza's 1.5 million residents would not be able to live a "pleasant and comfortable life" as long as southern Israel comes under rocket attack from Gaza.
"As far as I'm concerned Gaza residents will walk, without gas for their cars, because they have a murderous, terrorist regime that doesn't let people in southern Israel live in peace," Olmert told legislators from his Kadima Party.
In Gaza, children marched through dark streets holding candles, an angry Hamas TV announcer shouted at the camera "We are being killed, we are starving!" and Palestinian leaders pleaded for national unity. Israel accused Gaza's Hamas rulers of fabricating a crisis to gain world sympathy.
Electricity officials shut down Gaza's only power plant just before 8 p.m. Sunday, Gaza Energy Authority head Kanan Obeid said.
Health Ministry official Moaiya Hassanain warned the fuel cutoff would cause a health catastrophe. "We have the choice to either cut electricity on babies in the maternity ward or heart surgery patients or stop operating rooms," he said.
Gaza bakeries stopped operating because of the blockade, bakers said, because they had neither power nor flour. Residents of the impoverished strip, which has a population of some 1.5 million, typically rely on fresh pita bread as a main part of their diet.
Waiting in a line at the only open bakery for miles around, Mohammed Salman said he had spent far more on a taxi getting to the shop than he would on bread.
"I'm going to buy something that my family can keep for only two days because there is no electricity and no refrigerator," Salman said. "We cannot keep anything longer than that."
A U.N. aid agency spokesman said international food aid to Gaza would be suspended if the closure continues.
"We are going to have to suspend operations on Thursday or Friday ... because we are running out of plastic bags we use for food, and we are running out of fuel," said Chris Gunness, spokesman for the United Nations Relief Works Agency, which distributes food aid to 860,000 Palestinians in Gaza.
In addition to the fuel it receives from Israel to power its electrical plant, Gaza gets about 70 percent of its electricity directly from Israel _ and that has not been stopped, Israeli officials said.
The power plant supplies most of the remaining electricity, and Israeli officials acknowledged that the fuel used to supply it has been stopped.
Israeli Defense Ministry spokesman Shlomo Dror suggested the crossings would not be opened in the coming days, saying that a reduction of rocket attacks this week was not enough. The army said five rockets were fired on Sunday, down from 53 in the two previous days.
"If we open the crossings again tomorrow there will be rockets that fall again on Israel," Dror said. "They don't want to recognize Israel and want to destroy Israel, that's their problem. They shouldn't expect that we will help them destroy us."
Dror and other Israeli officials charged that Hamas was creating a false crisis and could resume the electricity if it wanted.
Hamas claimed that five people had died at hospitals because of the power outage. However, health officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were contradicting the official line, denied the claim.
Late Sunday, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas appealed to Israel to lift the blockade, said Abbas spokesman Nabil Abu Rdeneh. Abbas effectively rules only the West Bank after Hamas expelled his forces from Gaza last June.
Abbas renewed peace talks with Israel after a U.S. peace conference in November. On Monday, some Palestinians urged Abbas to break them off.
Negotiators for Abbas' government will raise the Gaza situation in the next session, but Abbas does not want to pull out of the talks because of what's happening in Gaza, said Nabil Shaath, Abbas' representative in Egypt.
The exiled leader of Hamas on Sunday evening urged Arab leaders and Abbas to forget their differences and help the Gaza Strip. It was a dramatic and emotional plea from the hard-line Khaled Mashal, who lives in exile in Damascus, Syria.
"Oh Arab leaders, every minute in which a Palestinian dies in Gaza, you are responsible for his blood and soul before God," he told Al-Jazeera satellite TV in a live interview from Syria.
Human rights groups condemned the fuel cutoff.
The British group Oxfam called it "ineffective as well as unlawful." Gisha, an Israeli group that has fought the fuel cutbacks in Israel's Supreme Court, said "punishing Gaza's 1.5 million civilians does not stop the rocket fire; it only creates an impossible 'balance' of human suffering on both sides of the border."
Although Israel pulled out of Gaza in 2005, many still consider it responsible because it controls most land, sea and air access to the territory.
No comments:
Post a Comment