Death and Darkness in Gaza, People are dying, Help us!


A humanitarian crisis is underway as the Gaza Strip's only power plant began
to shut down on Sunday, and the tiny coastal territory entered its third
full day without shipments of vital food and fuel supplies due to Israel's
punitive sanctions.

The Gaza Strip's power plant has completely shut down on Sunday because it
no longer has the fuel needed to keep running. One of the plant's two
electricity-generating turbines had already shut down by noon.

This will drastically reduce output to 25 or 30 megawatts, down from the 65
megawatts the plant produces under normal conditions. By Sunday evening the
plant will shut down completely, leaving large swaths of the Gaza Strip in
darkness.

Omar Kittaneh, the head of the Palestine Energy Authority in Ramallah,
confirmed that by tonight, the one remaining operating turbine will be
powered down, and the Gaza power plant will no longer be generating any
electricity at all.

"We have asked the Israeli government to reverse its decision and to supply
fuel to operate the power plant", Dr. Kittaneh said. "We have talked to the
Israeli humanitarian coordination in their Ministry of Energy [National
Infrastructure]. We say this is totally Israel's responsibility, and that
reducing the fuel supplies until the plant had to shut down will affect not
only the electrical system but the water supply, and the entire
infrastructure in Gaza everything."

After months of increasingly harsh sanctions, Israel imposed a total closure
on the Strip's border crossings, even preventing the delivery of
humanitarian aid. The Israeli government says the closure is punishment for
an ongoing barrage of Palestinian homemade projectiles fired from the Gaza
Strip.

"Famine"

180 fuel stations have shut down after Gaza residents to buy gas for
cooking.

A Palestinian economist Hasan Abu Ramadan said the current humanitarian
disaster in the Gaza Strip will be deepened by the blockade on fuel and food
supplies. He warned that Gaza Strip could go from a situation of deep
poverty to all out famine, disease, and malnutrition.

Abu Ramadan said that more than 80% of the Strip's 1.5 million residents
have been surviving with the help of food aid from international
organizations such as UNRWA for Palestinian refugees.

International condemnation

Most international actors in the region believe there already is a
humanitarian crisis in Gaza, including the UN's Emergency Relief
Coordinator, the Undersecretary-general for humanitarian affairs John
Holmes, who said at a press conference at UNHQ in New York on Friday that
"This kind of action against the people in Gaza cannot be justified, even by
those rocket attacks".

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon expressed particular concern, in a
statement issued later on Friday through his spokesperson, about the
"decision by Israel to close the crossing points in between Gaza and Israel
used for the delivery of humanitarian assistance. Such action cuts off the
population from much-needed fuel supplies used to pump water and generate
electricity to homes and hospitals".

The UN Human Rights Council's Special Rapporteur on the situation of human
rights in the occupied territories, John Dugard, also issued a much sharper
statement on Friday, saying that Israel must have foreseen the loss of life
and injury to many nearby civilians when it targeted the Ministry of
Interior building in Gaza City.

This, and the killings of other Palestinians during the week, plus the
closures, "raise very serious questions about Israel's respect for
international law and its Commitment to the peace process", Dugard said. He
said it violates the strict prohibition on collective punishment contained
in the Fourth Geneva Convention, and one of the basic principles of
international humanitarian law: that military action must distinguish
between military targets and civilian targets.