GAZA CITY (AFP)
Gaza endured a fourth day of hardship on Monday as Israel kept up a punishing blockade, despite mounting international concern over a humanitarian crisis.
"As far as I'm concerned, all of Gaza's residents can walk, and have no fuel for their cars because they are governed by a murderous terrorist regime," Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said in remarks broadcast on army radio.
"Hamas is deliberately intensifying the crisis in the Gaza Strip in order to create pressure from the international community on Israel," Olmert said.
Amid mounting international concern, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak phoned Olmert to warn "of the deteriorating humanitarian situation resulting from the blockade."
The Arab League called on the UN Security Council to hold an emergency meeting on the Israeli blockade and "to carry out an international inquiry into Israeli crimes" after discussing the situation at its Cairo headquarters.
Hamas has called Israeli measures a "slow death" for the territory while Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas also "called on the Israeli government to lift its blockade of Gaza immediately."
Hundreds of Palestinians demonstrated near the Rafah border terminal, calling on Egypt to open Gaza's only crossing that bypasses Israel.
Israeli human rights groups, meanwhile, filed a petition asking the Supreme Court to order the state to resume supplies of industrial diesel into Gaza.
The European Union slammed what it termed as the "collective punishment" of impoverished Gaza's 1.5 million residents, leading calls for an end to the crippling measure.
EU External Relations Commissioner Benita Ferrero Waldner hit out against the "collective punishment of the people of Gaza. I urge the Israeli authorities to restart fuel supplies and open the crossings for the passage of humanitarian and commercial supplies." |
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Crisis Gaza's sole power plant, which provides electricity to Gaza City, shut down late Sunday after it ran out of fuel, plunging entire blocks into darkness.
With Gaza crossings closed and fuel for generators slowly running out, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) warned that hospitals in the territory only had a few days' worth of fuel to run their generators.
The Oxfam International aid agency warned that most of Gaza's remaining water supply pumps would have to shut down within hours because of the dwindling fuel supplies, adding that 40 percent of Gaza's population was without running water on Monday.
The United Nations warned it would be forced to stop distributing food to 860,000 people unless Israel opened the crossings to allow in supplies.
Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak ordered the crossings into Gaza closed late on Thursday, saying the move was aimed at pressuring militants inside to stop firing rockets and mortars into Israel.
But the armed wing of Hamas said it had fired another seven rockets and five mortar rounds at southern Israel on Monday.
Over the past week, Israeli raids in Gaza have killed 37 people, mostly militants, while gunmen have launched some 200 rockets or mortar rounds into Israel, lightly wounding at least 10 people.
The Gaza closure came amid peak winter demand for fuel and with Gaza already reeling from previous restrictions that Israel imposed after Hamas violently took power seven months ago. |
