The Gaza Strip’s sole power plant shut down due to a lack of fuel on Saturday, Kan’an ’Ubaid, the deputy chair of the Palestinian power and natural resources service said.
’Ubaid said during a press conference in Gaza City that 30-35% of homes in the Strip, and fully half of homes in Gaza City are now without electricity.
Israel, which controls Gaza’s borders, has limited fuel supplies since last September, culminating in an almost complete shutdown of the Nahal Oz fuel terminal after an attack on the crossing point in April.
The diesel-burning power plant supplies electricity to 800,000 of Gaza’s 1.5 million residents.
Additional electricity flows into Gaza from Israel and Egypt. The European Union pays for the fuel for the power plant.
Algeria recently offered to supply fuel to Gaza if Egypt would allow tanker trucks to pass through the Rafah border crossing, bypassing the Israeli-controlled crossings, ’Ubaid said.
Egyptian authorities had on Saturday yet to respond to the proposal. Iran also offered fuel to Gaza two years ago.
The UK-based aid organisation Oxfam called for an immediate restoration of fuel shipments.
‘Israel must allow into Gaza without any delay the fuel needed for the Gaza power plant to restart,’ said Oxfam International Director, Jeremy Hobbs.
‘The international community must act now without delay to insist that Israel abides by its humanitarian and human rights obligations towards the people of Gaza.
‘We cannot stand by and watch as one and a half million dependent people’s essential services, already weakened by a 10 month blockade, finally collapse,’ Hobbs added.
‘Egypt sent gas to Israel, and they should have sent it to the Gaza Strip instead,’ he said.
He thanked Algeria for its offer, and called on Egypt to allow Algerian fuel through the crossing.
The power plant consumes 450,000 litres of industrial fuel a day.
The Strip also ordinarily consumes 150,000 litres of gasoline, 350 thousand litres of diesel and 300 tons of cooking gas every day.
’Ubaid also accused Israel of shipping fuel to the Gaza Strip at the last minute. He also said that the shutdown of the power plant would only worsen an already building crisis in Gaza.
Meanwhile on Sunday morning, undercover Israeli forces killed a Palestinian fighter in the Gaza Strip, witnesses and medical sources said.
The dead body of 23-year-old Usama Al-Astal, a fighter with the Hamas armed wing, the Al-Qassam Brigades, was taken to a hospital in the city of Khan Younis.
Eyewitnesses told Ma’an’s reporter that Al-Astal was on lookout duty east of the town of Al-Qarara, when he noticed Israeli special forces entering the area.
He immediately hurled a grenade towards the Israelis, who fired back, killing him and wounding three other fighters.
Separately, local Palestinian sources said on Sunday morning that undercover Israeli forces infiltrated in the Nahda neighbourhood of Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, amid heavy gunfire. No casualties were reported.
Elsewhere, the military wing of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, (PFLP) the Abu Ali Mustafa Brigades, said on Sunday that their fighters shot and injured an Israeli soldier near the Sufa landfill in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip.
They said the shooting was in retaliation for Israeli atrocities against the Palestinian people.
The Fatah linked Al-Aqsa Brigades and Islamic Jihad’s Al-Quds Brigades claimed responsibility on Sunday for launching three homemade projectiles at the Kerem Shalom crossing point in southern Gaza.
They said in a statement that fighters from both groups cooperated to fire three projectiles in retaliation for ongoing Israeli attacks against the Palestinian people.
Meanwhile, Egypt opened the Rafah border crossing with the besieged Gaza Strip on Saturday to allow hundreds of Palestinians to leave the territory for advanced medical treatment.
The director of Gaza emergency services, Dr Muawiya Hassanein said: ‘We will transport 550 patients in 40 Palestinian ambulances and five trucks. All of them have official medical referrals from the health ministry.’
The patients include 200 people wounded in Israeli military operations and 70 children under the age of 16, he said.
A senior Hamas official confirmed that the crossing would be open for three days to allow the sick to enter for treatment and those trapped on one side or the other to cross back to their place of residence.
Ismail Radwan said: ‘The Rafah crossing will be open for three days beginning on Saturday for emergency cases, in the context of easing the suffering of our people and based on coordination between Hamas and Egypt.
‘We hope this will be the first step towards permanently opening the crossing and breaking the siege.’
Since the democratically elected Hamas movement seized power in Gaza nearly 11 months ago, taking over the entire government including the health ministry, Israel has sealed Gaza to all but very limited humanitarian assistance.
Human rights groups say the Israeli blockade amounts to ‘collective punishment’.
Some 25 ambulances lined up on the Gaza side of the border on Saturday as dozens of black-clad Hamas police patrolled the crossing, keeping crowds away from the area.
‘We hope Rafah will stay open like before. The health situation in Gaza is very serious. There is no medicine, nothing,’ said Mufid Habush, as he waited at the crossing with his five-year-old daughter.
The little girl, whose leg was amputated because of a birth defect, was due to have an operation in Egypt.
For months, Hamas has been calling on Egypt to open the Rafah border crossing, the only gateway to Gaza not under Israeli control, but it has done so on only a few occasions since last summer.
In January, Gaza forces blew open large sections of the border fence, sending hundreds of thousands of Palestinians pouring into Egypt to stock up on basic goods.
The border was later sealed, leaving some 500 Egyptians, mostly women and children, stranded in Gaza. On Sunday they were to be allowed to return, and Gazans were to be allowed back from Egypt on Monday.
Meanwhile, Israeli air raids on Gaza killed five Hamas resistance fighters on Saturday.
