By DPA
Gaza City : Israeli security officials have said the military would permit industrial diesel fuel to enter the Gaza Strip for one day, allowing the enclave’s sole power plant to resume operations following a four-day Israeli lockdown.
“On a one-time basis, Israel will allow in industrial diesel Tuesday,” Shlomo Dror, the spokesperson of the Israeli ministry of defence, said Monday, adding that medicines would also enter.
“In recent days there has been a decline in the number of Qassam rockets fired at Israel, which shows that Hamas can control the rocket fire if it wants to,” Dror said.
The rocket and mortar fire by Palestinian militants into Israel had reached exceptionally high numbers last week and prompted the decision to close the borders, officials said.
Speaking to reporters in Ramallah, Nimr Hamad, a spokesperson for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, said Gaza would have normal electricity supplies by Tuesday, claiming that Abbas’ efforts had led to the planned fuel imports.
Earlier, Rafik Husseini, Abbas’ bureau chief, said the situation in Gaza, which he termed “collective punishment”, was making it hard to continue negotiating a final peace deal with Israel.
The lock-down caused the Strip’s only local power plant to shut down. Power plant head Rafik Maliha said some 800,000 Gazans had no heating and were forced to use candles for light.
While most basic necessities were still in stock, officials warned that hospitals were running on diesel-operated emergency generators, which would also soon run out of fuel.
Officials at Gaza’s water utilities agency said two wastewater pumps in populated areas had overflown into the streets, as they were out of fuel, and another was being redirected into the sea without treatment. Drinking water supplies were also being affected.
Israel largely closed its borders with Gaza after the radical Islamic Hamas movement captured an Israeli soldier, who is still being held captive, in a cross-border raid 18 months ago.
It further tightened its blockade of the Strip in June, when Hamas seized sole control of the salient from security forces loyal to Abbas.
But on Friday, Israel closed also its Nahal Oz and Kerem Shalom crossings, which had thus far remained open, to shipments of basic necessities, including key food products, drugs and fuel.
“The situation is disastrous,” Hamas spokesperson Ismail Radwan told reporters in Gaza City.
Warning of a “big explosion” that would have “consequences on the entire region”, he urged Egypt to open its border with the Gaza Strip to medical supplies, food and fuel.
Israel, however, has accused Hamas of exaggerating the humanitarian situation in Gaza for “propaganda” purposes.
It pointed out Israel’s own power plants continue to supply 124 megawatts of electricity to the Strip, in addition to another 17 megawatts provided by Egypt.
A government statement said that they met some three-quarters of Gaza’s daily needs and patients would be able to enter Israel for urgent treatment.
“We won’t allow a humanitarian crisis in Gaza. That is clear,” a defiant President Ehud Olmert told his Kadima faction in Jerusalem.
“As far as I’m concerned, all the inhabitants of Gaza can walk and won’t have petrol for their cars, because they have a murderous regime,” he said.
His remarks came after the EU called the Israeli total closure “collective punishment” and warned it “will exacerbate an already dire humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip”.
Israeli soldiers meanwhile shot dead an Islamic Jihad militant in an exchange of fire in the West Bank city of Tulkarm. An Israeli battalion commander was also injured in the shootout.