RAMALLAH, Palestinian Territories: By suspending badly-needed fuel deliveries to the Gaza Strip after deadly overnight clashes, Israel has cast doubts on the viability of the hard-won measure aimed at helping the Palestinian people and easing tensions.
The deal, brokered by the United Nations and backed by the United States, Israel and others, had seen thousands of liters of Qatari-bought fuel trucked into Gaza daily to boost the impoverished territory’s electricity supply.
But only days after being brought into effect, Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman late Friday ordered the deliveries to stop after clashes on the Gaza-Israel border.
Despite hopes the fuel would help ease months of deadly violence, thousands of protesters gathered again Friday at the border fence. The Israeli army said five people were shot dead after “an organized attack” on an army post, using an explosive device which destroyed part of the fence.
The Gaza health ministry said seven Palestinians were killed.
The fuel deal had been reached without the agreement of the officially recognized Palestinian government, in what diplomats said was a first for Gaza — which is controlled by the rival Palestinian faction, Hamas.
And it had also raised questions on whether Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas is slowly being sidelined.
The Palestinian Authority (PA) headed by Abbas has semi autonomy in parts of the occupied West Bank, but lost control of Gaza to Hamas in a near-civil war in 2007.
But the PA has long been the only address for most international powers and a senior official declared Thursday it would no longer work with the UN envoy who brokered the deal.
The UN and other parties say they are merely seeking to improve the desperate humanitarian situation in the strip, under a crippling Israeli blockade for a decade.
More than two thirds of Gaza’s two million residents rely on aid, while there are only four hours of mains electricity a day.
Great efforts were made to convince Abbas to agree to the fuel deal, UN and diplomatic sources said, with a decision ultimately made to work around him.
“The humanitarian imperative is more important than the relationship with the PA,” one diplomat said.
There has been criticism of the PA that it has done little to ease the suffering of Gazans over the past decade and Abbas has even taken punitive measures against the strip to squeeze Hamas.
But the Palestinian Authority fears the United States, which is due to announce a peace proposal, and others may seek to further split Gaza from the West Bank, dimming already slim hopes for a two-state solution between a Palestinian entity and Israel.
Western diplomats fear Abbas may now take new steps, or even cut off some ties with international powers.
“We could end up choosing between working with the PA and easing the humanitarian situation in Gaza,” one diplomat in Jerusalem warned.
Abbas has not set foot in Gaza since the PA’s 2007 polls defeat there, with multiple rounds of reconciliation talks failing.
The Islamist Hamas has since fought three wars with Israel and Western powers consider it a terrorist organization. A return to power of the Abbas government in Gaza is seen as a key step to achieving an independent Palestinian state.
But in Gaza, Hamas has organized months of often violent border protests, with nearly 200 Palestinians and one Israeli killed since March 30.
In a recent rare interview Hamas’s Gaza leader Yahya Sinwar encouraged world powers to work with it to ease the suffering.
Egypt and the United Nations had sought a deal whereby Hamas ended the protests in exchange for an easing of Israel’s crippling blockade. But Abbas was opposed, seeing it as tacit recognition of Hamas’s control over Gaza.
Under the limited agreement which came into force on Tuesday Qatar, a longtime Hamas backer, was to pay $60 million for fuel to be brought into Gaza over six months to fuel the strip’s sole power plant.
At least six trucks have entered the Gaza Strip since Tuesday, bringing more than 200,000 liters of diesel, and there had been plans for it to reach up to 15 trucks a day.
On Thursday senior Palestinian official Ahmed Majdalani said UN envoy Nickolay Mladenov, architect of the deal, was “no longer acceptable” to the PA, accusing him of exceeding his mandate.
“There is a deep paranoia in Ramallah that this UN initiative is part of a broader conspiracy between Israel, the US and the UN to have a mini-state in Gaza and sideline Abbas,” Hugh Lovatt of the European Council of Foreign Relations think tank told AFP.
“In Europe there is no desire to sideline the PA, but there is recognition that it has created obstacles to improving the situation in Gaza.”
Abbas has also boycotted the US administration since US President Donald Trump recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital in December 2017. Palestinians consider the eastern part of the city their capital.
Suspended Gaza fuel deal shreds tough diplomatic efforts
Suspended Gaza fuel deal shreds tough diplomatic efforts
- The fuel deal had been reached without the agreement of the officially recognized Palestinian government
- More than two thirds of Gaza’s two million residents rely on aid
Gaza’s living conditions worsen as strong winds and hypothermia kill 5
- Hundreds of tents and makeshift shelters were blown away or heavily damaged, the UN humanitarian office reported
DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip: Strong winter winds collapsed walls onto flimsy tents for Palestinians displaced by war in Gaza, killing at least four people, hospital authorities said Tuesday.
Dangerous living conditions persist in Gaza after more than two years of devastating Israeli bombardment and aid shortfalls. A ceasefire has been in effect since Oct. 10. But aid groups say that Palestinians broadly lack the shelter necessary to withstand frequent winter storms.
The dead include two women, a girl and a man, according to Shifa Hospital, Gaza City’s largest, which received the bodies.
The Gaza Health Ministry said Tuesday a 1-year-old boy died of hypothermia overnight, while the spokesman for the UN’s children agency said over 100 children and teenagers have been killed by “military means” since the ceasefire began.
Meanwhile, Israel’s military said it exchanged fire Tuesday with six people spotted near its troops deployed in southern Gaza, killing at least two of them in western Rafah.
Family mourns relatives killed by wall collapse
Three members of the same family — 72-year-old Mohamed Hamouda, his 15-year-old granddaughter and his daughter-in-law — were killed when an 8-meter (26-foot) high wall collapsed onto their tent in a coastal area along the Mediterranean shore of Gaza City, Shifa Hospital said. At least five others were injured.
Their relatives on Tuesday began removing the rubble that had buried their loved ones and rebuilding the tent shelters for survivors.
“The world has allowed us to witness death in all its forms,” Bassel Hamouda said after the funeral. “It’s true the bombing may have temporarily stopped, but we have witnessed every conceivable cause of death in the world in the Gaza Strip.”
A second woman was killed when a wall fell on her tent in the western part of the city, Shifa Hospital said.
Hundreds of tents and makeshift shelters were blown away or heavily damaged, the UN humanitarian office reported.
The UN and its humanitarian partners were distributing tents, tarps, blankets and clothes as well as nutrition and hygiene items across Gaza, said the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
The majority of Palestinians live in makeshift tents since their homes were reduced to rubble during the war. When storms strike the territory, Palestinian rescue workers warn people against seeking shelter inside damaged buildings for fears of collapse. Aid groups say not enough shelter materials are entering Gaza during the truce.
In the central town of Zawaida, Associated Press footage showed inundated tents Tuesday morning, with people trying to rebuild their shelters.
Yasmin Shalha, a displaced woman from the northern town of Beit Lahiya, stood against winds that lifted the tarps of tents around her as she stitched hers back together with needle and thread. She said it had fallen on top of her family the night before, as they slept.
“The winds were very, very strong. The tent collapsed over us,” the mother of five told AP. “As you can see, our situation is dire.”
On the shore in southern Gaza, tents were swept into the Mediterranean. Families pulled what was left from the sea, while some built sand barriers to hold back rising water.
“The sea took our mattresses, our tents, our food and everything we owned,” Shaban Abu Ishaq said, as he dragged part of his tent out of the sea in the Muwasi area of Khan Younis.
Mohamed Al-Sawalha, a 72-year-old man from the northern refugee camp of Jabaliya, said the conditions most Palestinians in Gaza endure are barely livable.
“It doesn’t work neither in summer nor in winter,” he said of the tent. “We left behind houses and buildings (with) doors that could be opened and closed. Now we live in a tent. Even sheep don’t live like we do.”
Residents aren’t able to return to their homes in Israeli-controlled areas of the Gaza Strip.
Child death toll in Gaza rises
Gaza’s Health Ministry said the 1-year-old in the central town of Deir Al-Balah was the seventh fatality due to the cold conditions since winter started. Others included a baby just seven days old and a 4-year-old girl, whose deaths were announced Monday.
The ministry, part of the Hamas-run government, says more than 440 people were killed by Israeli fire and their bodies brought to hospitals since the ceasefire went into effect. The ministry maintains detailed casualty records that are seen as generally reliable by UN agencies and independent experts.
UNICEF spokesman James Elder said Tuesday at least 100 children under the age of 18 — 60 boys and 40 girls — have been killed since the truce began due to military operations, including drone strikes, airstrikes, tank shelling and use of live ammunition. Those figures, he said, reflect incidents where enough details have been compiled to warrant recording, but the total toll is expected to be higher. He said hundreds of children have been wounded.
While “bombings and shootings have slowed” during the ceasefire, they have not stopped, Elder told reporters at a UN briefing in Geneva by video from Gaza City. “So what the world now calls calm would be considered a crisis anywhere else,” he said.
Gaza’s population of more than 2 million people has been struggling to keep the cold weather and storms at bay while facing shortages of humanitarian aid and a lack of more substantial temporary housing, which is badly needed during the winter months. It’s the third winter since the war between Israel and Hamas started on Oct. 7, 2023, when militants stormed into southern Israel and killed around 1,200 people and abducted 251 others into Gaza.
Gaza’s Health Ministry says more than 71,400 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s retaliatory offensive.
