Jerusalem – Israel’s security cabinet on Wednesday declared the Gaza Strip a “hostile entity” and said it would begin cutting electricity and fuel supplies to the Hamas-run territory in an effort to stop the constant rocket fire into Israel.
The decision further splits Gaza from the West Bank, the other main territorial component of a future Palestinian state, and holds potentially grave humanitarian consequences for the strip’s roughly 1.5 million residents who rely on imported food, medicine and energy to survive. It also poses new challenges to the Bush administration’s peace- making efforts, coming on the first day of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s visit to promote a U.S.-sponsored meeting of Israeli, Palestinian and regional leaders proposed for later this year.
Gaza’s crossings with Israel have been closed for all but emergency aid since Hamas, an armed Islamic movement, seized control of the strip in June after defeating forces from the secular Fatah party.
Under the Israeli security cabinet’s decision, “additional sanctions will be placed on the Hamas regime in order to restrict the passage of various goods to the Gaza Strip and reduce the supply of fuel and electricity.” It did not say when the new sanctions would begin.
“It’s not a secret that Hamas is a terrorist organization,” Tzipi Livni, Israel’s foreign minister, told a news conference in Jerusalem after meeting with Rice. “Even though when it comes to humanitarian needs we have our responsibilities, on the other hand, all the needs which are more than humanitarian needs will not be supplied by Israel.”
In a statement posted on a Hamas website, Fawzi Barhoum, a spokesman for the movement, called the Israeli decision “a declaration of full-fledged war on the Gaza Strip.”
“The steps are in preparation for a military operation that is looming with the Zionist occupation forces,” Barhoum said in the statement.
