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Palestinians waited to buy bread from a baker in the Gaza Strip on Monday.
By ISABEL KERSHNER
Published: January 22, 2008


JERUSALEM — The Israeli defense minister, Ehud Barak, announced Monday night that he was lifting some of the restrictions imposed on Gaza and that on Tuesday morning he would allow delivery of a week’s supply of industrial diesel for the local power station, as well as 50 trucks of food and medical supplies.

The decision came as aid officials warned that Gaza, gripped by fuel and electricity shortages, was two or three days away from a health and food crisis, and as international alarm and criticism of Israel mounted.

Israeli officials said they made the decision after reviewing the situation in Gaza, which they had insisted they would not allow to become a humanitarian crisis, and after seeing a reduction in rocket fire. They denied that international pressure was a factor.

Mr. Barak had ordered the closure of the border crossings into Gaza on Thursday night, halting all imports, in response to last week’s intense rocket fire against Israel by militant groups in the Hamas-run Gaza Strip.

No goods have been allowed in since, and Gaza shut down its only power station on Sunday as the industrial diesel needed to fuel it ran out.

Israel and Egypt continued to provide electricity to Gaza by cable, but the closure of the power station cut the strip’s supply by at least a quarter, or by as much as 43 percent, according to different estimates of the area’s needs. By Monday night, parts of Gaza City, where about a third of Gaza’s 1.5 million people reside, had been totally blacked out for 24 hours.

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency, which provides assistance to Palestinian refugees and their descendants, announced on Monday that it would have to suspend its food aid to 860,000 Gaza residents by Wednesday or Thursday if the crossings were not reopened, because it was running out of the nylon bags it uses to measure out and distribute staples like flour. The agency had enough fuel to run its vehicles for only two or three more days, said a spokesman, Christopher Gunness. “We had to give away about half of our reserves today, for hospital generators and the like,” he said.

The international aid agency Oxfam warned in a statement issued Monday afternoon that Gaza’s water and sewage systems were “a matter of hours from almost total shut down as stocks of fuel to run vital pumps runs out.”

Mahmoud Daher, a health officer for the World Health Organization in Gaza, said on Monday that there was a shortage of more than a hundred types of medication, and there were no spare parts to fix broken generators. “There is no crisis yet, but there will be one if the situation continues,” Mr. Daher said. “We are on the edge.”

Benita Ferrero-Waldner, commissioner for external relations of the European Commission, condemned the rocket fire into Israel, but also condemned what she called Israel’s “collective punishment of the people of Gaza.”

A spokeswoman for the French Foreign Ministry also said that “the measures taken amount to collective punishment of the entire civilian population,” and Britain’s foreign secretary, David Miliband, and international development secretary, Douglas Alexander, issued a joint statement saying that “Israeli security and justice for Palestinians will not be achieved by cutting off fuel or by firing rockets.”

There were also expressions of concern from the Arab world, and the president of Egypt, Hosni Mubarak, called both the prime minister of Israel, Ehud Olmert, and Mr. Barak, according to the official Egyptian news agency, MENA. Thirteen of the 50 aid trucks Israel will allow in on Tuesday will carry assistance from Jordan.

Israeli officials said it was not Israel inflicting the collective punishment, but Hamas.

“It is very interesting that we didn’t hear these condemnations when the rockets were falling,” said Shlomo Dror, spokesman for Israel’s Ministry of Defense. “Is that not collective punishment?” he said, adding that the situation in Sderot, the Israeli town near the Gaza border that the militants aim most of their rockets at, had become “intolerable.”

Despite the growing pressure, Israeli officials had insisted Monday that the Hamas leadership in Gaza was exaggerating the effects of the blockade.

Arye Mekel, a spokesman for Israel’s Foreign Ministry, said, “What we are seeing now is a staged production by Hamas.”

Given the amount of electricity provided by Israel and Egypt, there was no justification for the massive blackouts, Mr. Mekel said, even with a shortage of fuel.

Israel said it would allow in some diesel for generators, assuming it would be sent to the hospitals, and cooking gas, but was still not planning to allow the resumption of deliveries of gasoline for private cars. At a meeting with members of his Kadima party on Monday, Mr. Olmert said, “As far as I’m concerned, the residents of Gaza can walk if they don’t have petrol for their cars, because they have a murderous terrorist regime that won’t let people in the south of Israel live in safety.”

The militant Islamic group Hamas seized control of Gaza last June, after routing its rival, Fatah, in a brief factional war. On Monday, people in Gaza blamed both Hamas and Israel for their situation.

“The Hamas government brought us poverty, but Israel is the enemy,” said Nidal Shehada, 22, a taxi driver, who had enough fuel to last till the end of the day.

“The rockets are a pretext,” said Um Muhammad Zibda, a woman in her early 40s. Israel’s real goal, she said, was to bring about the collapse of the Hamas government.

Suheil Skeik, general manager of Gaza Electricity Distribution Corporation, said that his workers had been trying to transfer electricity delivered by Israel to northern Gaza to the main hospital in Gaza City, but that they were having technical problems.

Mr. Mekel, the Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman, said that Israel would continue to monitor the situation in Gaza and take decisions accordingly. “We hope that Hamas got the message,” Mr. Mekel said, noting that the sharp decrease in rocket launches since Saturday showed that Hamas could control the fire.

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