GAZA CITY (AFP) — The lights went back on in parts of Gaza City Tuesday as Israel eased a blockade and allowed some fuel in to the impoverished Hamas-run territory, as the UN Security Council considered calls for a complete end to the lockdown.
Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas called on the Jewish state to lift the lockdown, now in its fifth day, amid mounting international fears of a humanitarian crisis in a territory where most people depend on foreign aid.
The United States, while also expressing concern about the impact of the blockade on the people, said Israel was defending itself against rocket attacks by Palestinian militants.
Israel's foreign minister said her country would continue to protect itself despite international criticism.
Trucks carrying cooking gas, industrial diesel and fuel oil entered Gaza early Tuesday for the first time since Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak ordered the strip sealed off late Thursday in response to persistent rocket fire.
Hours later the territory's sole power plant went back online and electricity returned to blocks in Gaza City that had been without power since the plant shut down on Sunday.
Several trucks carrying food also entered the territory, aid officials said, and others with medicine and humanitarian aid are expected in on Wednesday.
Israel warned that Tuesday's fuel deliveries were a "one-off shipment" that would be reassessed based on rocket and mortar fire from Gaza.
"We want to send a clear message to Hamas but at the same time, we do not wish to get into clashes with the international community," foreign ministry spokesman Arye Mekel said.
Yet Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni said "Israel does not need to apologise for its existence or to apologise for protecting its citizens. Israel will continue to act and fulfill its commitment to its citizens even at the price of condemnation.
"We left Gaza. Israel can no longer remain the pretext for terror organisation attacks against Israel," she said at a conference on Israel national security, referring to the Jewish state's 2005 withdrawal from Gaza after 38 years of occupation.
International aid agencies warned on Tuesday that Gaza was at risk of a "total collapse" of its infrastructure if Israeli blockade measures continued.
"The blockade measures have an enormous human cost and we have asked Israel to immediately lift all retaliatory measures," Dorothea Krimitsas, a spokeswoman for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said in Geneva.
In New York, the UN Security Council adjourned until Wednesday talks on a statement that would urge an end to the Israeli lockdown while also slamming militants firing rockets into the Jewish state.
But a council diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity after a heated emergency session, voiced skepticism that the United States, a staunch ally of Israel, would accept a compromise text sought by the 14 other council members.
"Fourteen members indicated (during Tuesday's debate) they wanted a (compromise) text. One, the United States, expressed reluctance," the diplomat said. "Therefore, it will be difficult to agree an acceptable compromise."
Adoption of the non-binding text requires approval by all members.
Libya, the council chair this month, submitted a draft that would call on Israel to end its blockade of Gaza and ensure "unhindered access for humanitarian assistance to the Palestinian people," according to a copy of the text obtained by AFP.
The text would also urge Israel "to abide by its obligation under international law, including humanitarian and human rights law, and immediately to cease all its illegal measures and practices against the Palestinian civilian population in the Gaza Strip."
However, US Ambassador to the United Nations Zalmay Khalilzad told reporters the draft in its current form was "unacceptable" because "it does not talk about the rocket attacks on innocent Israelis."
At the White House, spokeswoman Dana Perino expressed understanding for Israel's dilemma.
"One of the reasons that Israel has taken the action it has is because it was sustaining upwards of 150 rockets falling on its territory a day. And so Israel is defending itself," she said.
Even so, while Washington reiterated that Hamas bore responsibility for the lockdown because of the continuing rocket fire, it warned Israel about not allowing a humanitarian crisis to develop.
"Ultimately, Hamas is to blame for this circumstance because if they were more responsible toward the international community, then Gaza would be connected to the outside world rather than cut off," US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said.
"But that said, nobody wants innocent Gazans to suffer so we have spoken to the Israelis about the importance of not allowing a humanitarian crisis to unfold there."
Perino added that "the Palestinians are clearly seeing there is a choice that they can make, which is to live under the near-humanitarian crisis that they have in Gaza, or the possibility of a Palestinian state."
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