HERZLIYA: Israel’s defense minister on Thursday accused Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas of trying to spark a fresh conflict between the Jewish state and Abbas’s longtime rival Hamas.
Avigdor Lieberman said Abbas, head of the secular Fatah movement that rules the occupied West Bank, was trying to increase tensions by cutting payments for electricity and other services in Gaza.
“Abu Mazen didn’t make a one-time cut,” Lieberman told the annual Herzilya security conference near Tel Aviv, referring to Abbas by his nickname.
“His intention is actually to continue cuts and in a few months to stop paying for fuel, medicines, salaries and many other things.”
“In my opinion the strategy is to hurt Hamas and also to drag Hamas into a conflict with Israel,” he said.
Hamas seized Gaza from Fatah in 2007 and the two Palestinian factions have had hostile relations since.
The Abbas-led Palestinian Authority had nonetheless continued to pay for electricity and some other services in Gaza.
Abbas recently announced the PA would no longer pay Israel to supply electricity to Gaza, prompting Israel to stop deliveries this week.
The move threatened to leave the 2 million Gazans with as little as two hours of power a day, prompting warnings of risks of Hamas retaliation.
Israel and Hamas have fought three wars in Gaza since 2008, most recently in 2014.
Defense minister accuses Abbas of wanting Israel-Hamas war
Defense minister accuses Abbas of wanting Israel-Hamas war
UN agency begins clearing huge Gaza City waste dump
- Some Palestinians sifted through the garbage, looking for things to take away, but there was relief that the market space would eventually be cleared
CAIRO, GAZA: The UN Development Programme began clearing a huge wartime garbage dump on Wednesday that has swallowed one of Gaza City’s oldest commercial districts and is an environmental and health risk.
Alessandro Mrakic, head of the UNDP Gaza Office, said work had started to remove the solid-waste mound that has overtaken the once busy Fras Market in the Palestinian enclave’s main city.
He put the volume of the dump at more than 300,000 cubic meters and 13 meters high.
It formed after municipal crews were blocked from reaching Gaza’s main landfill in the Juhr Al-Dik area — adjacent to the border with Israel — when the Gaza war began in October 2023.
The area in Juhr Aal-Dik is now under full Israeli control.
Over the next six months, UNDP plans to transfer the waste to a new temporary site prepared in the Abu Jarad area south of Gaza City and built to meet environmental standards.
The site covers 75,000 square meters and will also accommodate daily collection, Mrakic said. The project is funded by the Humanitarian Fund and the European Union’s Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid Operations.
Some Palestinians sifted through the garbage, looking for things to take away, but there was relief that the market space would eventually be cleared.
“It needs to be moved to a site with a complex of old waste, far away from people. There’s no other solution. What will this cause? It will cause us gases, it will cause us diseases, it will cause us germs,” elderly Gazan Abu Issa said near the site.
