By DPA
Ramallah/Tel Aviv : Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak has authorized a security plan that would allow for the disruption of electricity and fuel supply to the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip.
Electricity would be intermittently cut and fuel supplies would be reduced in a gradual process likely to begin next week, defence officials said Thursday.
The officials added that the gradual implementation was meant to continue Israel’s disengagement from the Gaza Strip, which began in 2005 when Israel dismantled its settlements in the territory.
The cuts would not be severe enough to cause a humanitarian crisis or affect hospitals, officials said, and food and medical supplies to the impoverished enclave would continue unhampered.
The move comes after Israel’s cabinet last month declared the Gaza Strip a “hostile entity” over the ongoing rocket fire from the area.
Eight rockets and at least 10 mortar rounds were fired at Israel Thursday, the military said.
On Wednesday, Deputy Defence Minister Matan Vilnai said electricity would be cut for several hours a day in the course of several weeks to the northern Gaza town of Beit Hanoun and nearby areas from where militants fired the majority of the rockets into Israel.
Also, “non-vital” commercial produce would be further restricted.
Since the Hamas takeover of the Gaza Strip in June, imports have been mostly restricted to basic food and medical supplies and exports have been almost entirely banned. Travel to and from the strip has also been severely limited.
The UN supplies humanitarian aid to over 1.1 million Palestinians in the enclave, and unemployment among the 1.5 million residents continues to rise as 90 percent of factories have closed since June.
Israeli officials have said cutting power would be a non-military response to the rocket fire.
The decision to cut electricity was harshly criticized by human rights groups and condemned by Palestinians from both Hamas and the acting West Bank based government.
Taher al-Nono, a spokesman for Hamas in Gaza, called on the international community to intervene to stop the “collective punishment”.
While Israel supplies the majority of Gaza’s power, it would most likely only be able to reduce the flow to the northern section of the strip in the short term, as the other power lines also serve Israeli military bases outside Gaza.
Chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat, in a statement issued in Ramallah on the West Bank, termed the decision “outrageous” and “provocative” and said it would cause more suffering to the Palestinian in Gaza.
Earlier, Erekat, a member of the Palestinian negotiating team with Israel, called on the Israeli government to stop all its harsh measures in the West Bank in order to allow the peace process to move forward.
He told the Voice of Palestine radio that even though the Palestinian and Israeli teams held an “in-depth and serious” meeting Wednesday night, the fourth in a series of parleys to reach a joint document before the upcoming US-sponsored international meeting near Washington, Israeli measures could undermine peace efforts.
“The peace process cannot move forward by lowering expectations, settlements, the wall and killing of Palestinians,” he said. “This will be Israel’s biggest mistake.”
Earlier Thursday, Palestinian security officials reported that Israeli soldiers shot dead two members of the radical Islamic Jihad organization as they approached the border fence, but a spokesman for the Israeli military said only one had been shot, and the second was taken away for interrogation.
In a separate incident before dawn, Israeli soldiers killed two Hamas militants in the southern Gaza Strip.