GAZA (Dispatches) – The Zionist regime says it is cutting off its electricity supply to Gaza. The full effects of that are not immediately clear, but the territory’s desalination plants receive power for producing drinking water.
Sunday’s announcement comes a week after the occupying regime cut off all supplies of goods to the territory to over 2 million people. It has sought to press Hamas to accept an extension of the first phase of their ceasefire. That phase ended last weekend.
Hamas has pressed to start negotiations on the ceasefire’s more difficult second phase instead.
Gaza has been largely devastated by the war, and generators and solar panels are used for some of the power supply.
Israel has also cut off humanitarian supplies to the Gaza Strip a day after the first phase of a truce deal with Hamas expired on March 1.
On Saturday, UNICEF communication specialist and spokesperson Rosalia Bollen warned that the blockade risks undoing much of the work humanitarian organizations have been able to complete during the ceasefire.
“It’s not just the aid that is halted from coming into Gaza, it’s also fuel.”
The coastal territory, she said, doesn’t have access “to sufficient electricity and that means its critical infrastructure – from desalination plants to hospitals – are dependent on the entry of fuel.”
She highlighted the urgent need to “scale up water production [and] fuel is a key element for that.”
Bollen said she saw “a very small baby that was born at 28 weeks,” before the ceasefire took effect in January.
“That baby died after three weeks because of a lack of ventilators and CPAP machines in that hospital.”