Gaza Strip - Israel

Israel resumes blockade after allowing aid to pass

Tuesday 18 November 2008

Israel allowed 33 truckloads of supplies into Gaza for the first time in two weeks, then resealed border crossings citing continued rocket fire at its towns. Earlier, Oxfam had warned of a 'humanitarian disaster' in Gaza if the blockade remained.

Israel resealed border crossings with the Gaza Strip on Tuesday citing continued rocket fire at its towns, despite warnings from world aid groups of looming shortages of food and fuel supplies in the coastal territory.

Israel had allowed 33 truckloads of supplies into Gaza for the first time in two weeks on Monday, and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert assured Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas he would not permit a humanitarian crisis to develop there.

"The crossings are shut because of ongoing rocket fire," Peter Lerner, a defence spokesman said, referring to several barrages of rockets fired from Gaza on Monday that slammed into Israeli towns, causing no injury.

International aid groups said the supplies sent in on Monday were not enough to alleviate food shortages.

Israel has also held up fuel shipments to Gaza's main power plant, leading to daily periodic electricity blackouts for many of 1.5 million Palestinians living in the territory.

Israel had not allowed UNRWA, a United Nations agency that aids some 750,000 refugees in Gaza, to bring in supplies since Nov. 4 during cross-border fighting in which more than a dozen Palestinian fighters were killed.

Several Israelis have been lightly wounded by dozens of rockets fired by gunmen after the Israeli raids.

Hamas gunmen fired mortar bombs at Israeli soldiers searching for explosives near the Gaza border fence on Tuesday, Israeli military and Hamas said. There were no reported casualties from that incident.

The British-based Oxfam International humanitarian agency said in a statement that "only the bare minimum of goods have entered Gaza in the past couple of days."

Barbara Stocking, Oxfam's chief executive, said the group "fears a serious worsening once again of the humanitarian situation if urgent action is not taken".

In talks with Olmert in Jerusalem on Monday, Abbas urged Israel to abide by a 5-month-old Egyptian-brokered truce with Hamas Islamists who control Gaza, a deal that has neared collapse in the past two weeks of fighting.

Abbas, involved in peace talks with Israel since last year, a move rejected by Hamas, has condemned Israel's tightened blockade of Gaza as a "war crime".

Olmert promised Abbas in talks they held on Monday that Israel would free some 250 Palestinian prisoners to the occupied West Bank, of some 11,000 Israel holds in its jails.

Israeli troops arrested 32 more Palestinian suspects in overnight raids against militant hideouts on Tuesday in the West Bank, a military spokesman said.