GAZA CITY: The Palestinian government has cut the electricity supply lines to six health centers in the Gaza Strip in a desperate effort to combat a chronic fuel shortage facing the occupied territory’s clinics and hospitals.
Officials in the coastal enclave have portrayed the move as a last ditch attempt to avert a “severe crisis” from crippling Gaza’s health system eleven years after Israel imposed a devastating land, air and sea blockade on the area.
But the blackout has also underlined continued divisions between rival Palestinian factions who blame each other for a funding gap of more than $290,000 in the health service’s budget. While Hamas claims not to have received the money, the Palestinian Authority in the occupied West Bank insists it has been allocated but is not being spent properly.
Dr. Ashraf Al-Qidra, a spokesman for the Ministry of Health in Gaza, warned that the fuel shortage was expected to get significantly worse if the problems continued.
“We are concerned that more [generators] will stop every day because there is no horizon to this severe crisis,” he said.
Approximately 1.9 million people, including 1.3 million refugees, are estimated to live in Gaza and roughly 80 percent of the population is dependent on international assistance, according to the UN.
While the main hospitals in the area are still functioning, the Ministry of Health decided on Monday to shut down the electricity generators supplying six health centers — bringing to 19 the total number of hospitals and clinics now without power as a result of “severe austerity measures.”
Gaza remains under the control of Hamas, which took power in 2007 after winning legislative elections a year earlier. Its victory led to a bitter dispute with Fatah that only ended last autumn, when the two sides agreed to a reconciliation deal after talks brokered by Egypt.
But the agreement has yet to be fully implemented and the Palestinian Minister of Health, Dr. Jawad Awad, has accused Hamas of contributing to the crisis in Gaza by mismanaging its resources. Based in the occupied West Bank, he told state radio that his ministry had fulfilled its funding obligations — a claim rejected by Al-Qidra.
Blackouts and load-shedding have long been common in Gaza, with electricity often limited to just a few hours every day for the general population.
The Ministry of Health in Gaza says it needs 40,000 liters of diesel every month in order for its hospitals and clinics to receive 12 hours of electricity per day. It currently appears to be far short of this target.
Gaza is already in the grip of a severe economic crisis that has decimated the private sector. Last month businesses throughout the area staged a mass strike in protest against conditions and announced they would stop receiving goods through the remaining commercial border crossing to Israel at Kerem Shalom.
Even the Israeli president, Reuven Rivlin, has warned that Gaza’s infrastructure is on the verge of total collapse.
Maher Al-Tabaa, director of public relations at the Chamber of Commerce in Gaza, described the economic situation as a “clinical death.”
“We seek to send a message to all parties — from the factions, the government, international organizations and the international community that we cannot live in Gaza if the situation continues as it is,” he told the Arab News.
Health services in Gaza crippled by fuel shortage
Health services in Gaza crippled by fuel shortage
Hamas negotiators ‘not in Doha’ but political office not closed: Qatar
- Qatar hosted the Palestinian militant group since 2012 announced earlier this month it was pausing its mediation efforts
Doha: Hamas negotiators are not in Doha but the Palestinian militant group’s office there has not been permanently closed, Qatar said on Tuesday.
“The leaders of Hamas that are within the negotiating team are now not in Doha,” foreign ministry spokesperson Majed Al-Ansari said, adding: “The decision to... close down the office permanently, is a decision that you will hear about from us directly.”
Qatar, along with the United States and Egypt, had been engaged in months of fruitless negotiations for a truce in the Gaza war, which would include a hostage and prisoner release deal.
But the Gulf state, which has hosted the Palestinian militant group since 2012, with Washington’s blessing, announced earlier this month it was pausing its mediation efforts.
“The mediation process right now... is suspended unless we take a decision to reverse that which is based on the positions of both sides,” Ansari said on Tuesday.
“The office of Hamas in Doha was created for the sake of the mediation process. Obviously, when there is no mediation process, the office itself doesn’t have any function,” he added, declining to confirm whether Qatar had asked Hamas officials to leave.
Syrian top diplomat arrives in Tehran for talks
- Sabbagh is in Tehran for his first visit since taking up his post in September to meet Iranian officials, local media reported
Tehran: Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi welcomed his new Syrian counterpart Bassam Al-Sabbagh in Tehran on Tuesday, the latest in a series of meetings between top officials from the close allies.
Sabbagh is in Tehran for his first visit since taking up his post in September to meet Iranian officials, local media reported.
Details of his meetings have not yet been disclosed.
Al-Sabbagh’s visit comes less than a week after Ali Larijani, a senior adviser to Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, visited Syria and met with Syrian President Bashar Assad, a close ally of Iran.
Over the weekend, Iranian Defense Minister Aziz Nasrizadeh was in Damascus to hold talks with Syrian officials.
Earlier in October, Araghchi himself traveled to Damascus as part of a regional tour just days before Israel’s first confirmed attack on Iranian military sites.
This attack was a response to a large Iranian missile strike on Israel at the start of the month that was prompted by the killing of commanders of militant groups affiliated with Iran, including Hezbollah, and a commander of the Revolutionary Guards.
It followed an Iranian missile and drone attack against Israel in April that was triggered by a strike on an Iranian diplomatic building in Damascus blamed on Israel.
Iran does not recognize Israel and has made support for the Palestinian cause a cornerstone of its foreign policy since the Islamic Revolution in 1979.
As a staunch ally of Damascus, Tehran has supported Bashar Assad during more than a decade of civil war in Syria.
Norway to ask ICJ to step in after Israel bans UNRWA
- Bills passed by Israel’s parliament will stop UN agency from sending vital aid to Gaza
- Norwegian FM: Bills will ‘undermine the stability of the entire Middle East’
London: Norway will ask the International Court of Justice for an advisory opinion condemning Israel for ceasing cooperation with the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, The Guardian reported on Tuesday.
Last month, Israel’s parliament passed two bills banning the agency from the country and forbidding state cooperation with it.
There are fears that the bills, due to come into effect within three months, will prevent UNRWA from delivering vital aid into Gaza.
The agency says two-thirds of its buildings have been destroyed in Israel’s invasion of the Palestinian enclave, and 243 staff have been killed.
Norway’s Deputy Foreign Minister Andreas Motzfeldt Kravik has held talks at the UN on a draft resolution to urge an advisory opinion from the ICJ to protect the existence of UNRWA.
Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Store said: “The international community cannot accept that the UN, international humanitarian organizations, and states continue to face systematic obstacles when working in Palestine and delivering humanitarian assistance to Palestinians under occupation.
“We are therefore requesting the International Court of Justice for an advisory opinion on Israel’s obligations to facilitate humanitarian assistance to the Palestinian population, delivered by international organizations, including the UN, and states.”
Norwegian Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide said the Israeli bills would “undermine the stability of the entire Middle East” and have “severe consequences for millions of civilians already living in the most dire of circumstances.”
Norway’s move is being backed by an increasing number of UN figures and member states. UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy said at the UN on Monday: “The situation (in Gaza) is devastating and beyond comprehension, and frankly it is getting worse. It is totally unacceptable that it is harder than ever to get aid into Gaza.
“In October only 37 aid trucks reached Gaza, the lowest ever. There is no excuse for Israeli restrictions on aid.”
UNRWA Commissioner General Philippe Lazzarini said: “I have drawn the attention of the member states that now the clock is ticking … We have to stop or prevent the implementation of this bill.”
According to the UN Charter, UN buildings are meant to be inviolable during conflicts. After the 2008 war in Gaza, Israel paid the UN compensation amounting to $10.4 million for damage caused to its premises after an investigation determined “an egregious breach of the inviolability of the United Nations premises and a failure to accord the property and assets of the organisation immunity from any form of interference.”
UN says over 200 children killed in Lebanon in under 2 months
Geneva: The UN said Tuesday that over 200 children have been killed in Lebanon in the less than two months since Israel escalated its attacks targeting Hezbollah.
“Despite more than 200 children killed in Lebanon in less than two months, a disconcerting pattern has emerged: their deaths are met with inertia from those able to stop this violence,” James Elder, spokesman for the UN children’s agency UNICEF, told reporters in Geneva.
“Over the last two months in Lebanon, an average of three children have been killed every single day,” he said.
Israeli army says 40 projectiles fired from Lebanon into central, northern Israel
- On Monday, one person was killed and several people injured in two separate incidents
Jerusalem: The Israeli military said on Tuesday that some 40 projectiles were fired from Lebanon into central and northern Israel, with first responders reporting that four people were lightly injured by shrapnel.
“Following sirens that sounded between 09:50 and 09:51 in the Upper Galilee, Western Galilee, and Central Galilee areas, approximately 25 projectiles were identified crossing from Lebanon into Israel. Some of the projectiles were intercepted and fallen projectiles were identified in the area,” the military said in a statement.
That announcement followed earlier reports that some 15 projectiles fired that set of air raid sirens.
A spokesperson for Israeli first responders said that in central Israel it found “four individuals with light injuries from glass shards.... They were injured while in a concrete building where the windows shattered.”
The Israeli police said they were searching the impact sites from projectiles intercepted by Israel’s air defense systems but did not report any serious damage.
On Monday, one person was killed and several people were injured in two separate incidents, one in the northern Israeli town of Shfaram and the other in the suburbs of Israel’s commercial hub of Tel Aviv.
The military said Lebanon’s Hezbollah movement, which is backed by Iran, fired around 100 projectiles from Lebanon toward Israel on Monday, while Israel’s air force carried out strikes on Beirut.
Hezbollah began firing rockets into Israel in October last year in support of the Palestinian militant group Hamas in Gaza. Since September, Israel has conducted extensive bombing campaigns in Lebanon primarily targeting Hezbollah strongholds, though some strikes have hit areas outside the Iran-backed group’s control.
