Truck brings fuel into Gaza Strip
Abbas believes that if he keeps the Gaza closure tight, it will make Hamas accept his reconciliation plan… HANI AL-MASRI political analyst
A TRUCK brought fuel across Israel’s border into the Gaza Strip yesterday in what sources said was a Qatari and UN-backed drive to ease conditions in the enclave and stem any escalation in Palestinian-Israeli violence.
The shipment was a potential slap in the face to the Western-backed administration of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, which opposed the foreign relief plan.
Gaza is controlled by Abbas’s rival, the Islamist Hamas group and the Palestinian president has been using economic pressure to wrest back control.
Under a blockade by Israel and Egypt designed to isolate Hamas, Gaza has plunged into poverty.
The truck that entered Gaza brought the first delivery out of a $60 million (about R878m) fuel donation by Qatar meant to provide the power plant with enough fuel to operate for six months, local sources said.
The cash-starved plant has been providing Gazans with only about four hours of electricity daily.
A spokesperson for the Abbas-appointed Palestinian Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah, who is based in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, voiced disapproval of the fuel delivery.
“Any international financial aid to the Gaza Strip should be through, or with the co-ordination of, the Palestinian government,” he said, “in order to preserve Palestinian unity” and to stop any plans to separate Gaza from the West Bank.
A Qatari official on Sunday said that Doha planned to help with Gaza’s power crisis “at the request of donor states in the UN, to prevent an escalation of the existing humanitarian disaster”.
UN officials could not immediately be reached for comment.
Israel’s energy minister, Yuval Steinitz, yesterday said Qatar “was trying to help” prevent a Gaza flare-up.
Steinitz accused Abbas, who has restricted PA funding for Gaza, of “seeking to make gains on two counts: by encouraging a conflict in which Israel will clobber Hamas and over which he will then be able to clobber Israel on the world stage”.
Israel and Hamas have fought three wars since 2008.
“Abbas believes that if he keeps the Gaza closure tight, it will make Hamas accept his reconciliation plan, which would give the Abbas government full control – or the people in Gaza will launch a revolution against Hamas,” said Palestinian political analyst Hani al-Masri.
“This is making it easy for others to bypass the Palestinian Authority… They are trying to give them (Gazans) a sedative, sometimes through Egypt, and this time through Israel.”