Gaza’s one-and-a-half million residents have been struggling to cope without electricity and other basic necessities on the fourth day of an Israeli blockade.
As hospital began to run short of fuel for generators and sewage spilled out onto the streets, Israel’s prime minister said he would "not allow a humanitarian crisis in Gaza".
On Monday evening, Israel said that it would allow some deliveries of fuel and medicine into the territory on Tuesday.
"We think Hamas got the message. As we have seen in the past couple of days, when they want to stop the rockets, they can," Arye Mekel, Israeli foreign ministry spokesman, said.
Five rockets were fired from Gaza on Sunday, according to the Israeli army, down from 53 in the two previous days.
Gaza blackout
Gaza City was plunged into darkness on Sunday after its sole power plant was switched off as fuel supplies dried up following the Israeli blockade.
The decision by Ehud Barak, Israeli defence minister, will allow the European Union to resume deliveries of industrial fuel as well as diesel for generators and gas used for cooking. Restrictions will remain in place on petrol for vehicles.
The Israeli move came after the UN agency which supports the Palestinians, warned it might be forced to stop distributing food aid to 860,000 people in Gaza because of a shortage of nylon for plastic bags and fuel for vehicles and generators.
Christopher Gunness, a spokesman for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), said that the on-off blockade made it very difficult for his agency to provide relief.
"I suppose we have to be grateful for whatever they allow in, because at least it allows us to partially fulfil our mandates," he told Al Jazeera.
"This hand on the tap, allowing drips in now and drips in later, that’s not what we need. What we need is a sustained opening of the crossings."
Grave situation
Margaret Chan, director-general of the World
المزيد
ـــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــ
التصنيفات : غير مصنف |
