RT Monitoring Desk
GAZA CITY: Gaza endured a fourth day of hardship on Monday as Israel kept up a punishing blockade over rocket fire from the Hamas-run territory, despite mounting international concern over a humanitarian crisis.
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. The United Nations warned it would be forced to stop distributing food to hundreds of thousands of people unless Israel opened the crossings to allow in supplies. ‘If the present situation pertains, on Wednesday or Thursday we are going to have to stop food distribution to 860,000 people,’ Christopher Gunness, a spokesman for the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), told the newsmen.
Gaza’s sole power plant, which provides electricity to main population centre 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. But Israel dismissed warnings of a humanitarian meltdown, saying Hamas was exaggerating the situation in the territory that had reserves. ‘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. Meeting visiting Dutch Foreign Minister Maxime Verhagen, Olmert said:’Hamas is deliberately intensifying the crisis in the Gaza Strip in order to create pressure from the international community on Israel.’ ‘Israel will not allow a humanitarian crisis in Gaza,’ a senior government official quoted him as saying. ‘But the population has to understand that as long as Hamas rules there, we will provide them only with the bare minimum.’
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.’ Gunness said that Gaza faced ‘a desperate humanitarian situation that continues to deteriorate alarmingly’, while the main UN spokesman in Jerusalem, Richard Miron, called on the Israelis to make a ‘positive decision later today to allow fuel shipments and medicines into Gaza.’