"Israeli" fuel cuts dry up gasoline stations across Gaza

Source: Compiled by Daily Star, 03-12-2007
Gasoline stations shut across the Gaza Strip on Sunday as "Israel" continued to provide only restricted quantities of fuel to the Hamas-run territory, industry officials and witnesses said.
"Sorry, no fuel, no benzine, no petrol," read a typical sign posted at one gasoline station in Gaza City.
"All stations in Gaza have been shut down because there is no fuel of any kind," Mahmud al-Khuzudnar, a deputy chief of a Gaza association for gasoline stations, said.
"Israel", the only route by which Gaza can receive its fuel, has delivered only restricted supplies since October 28 and Khuzudnar said that the association was not releasing for sale the quantities received on Sunday in protest of the cuts.
Khuzudnar said that 60,000 liters of diesel came through via "Israel" on Sunday instead of the 350,000 liters that are needed on a daily basis.
"We are not putting the 60,000 liters on sale to protest the cutbacks," Khuzudnar said, adding that the fuel would go into storage.
Jewish and Palestinian human rights groups had appealed to "Israel`s" Supreme Court to halt the restrictions, calling them an act of illegal collective punishment that endangered civilians.
But on Friday the court said the state could continue with the cuts, saying it was possible to do so without affecting the humanitarian situation in Gaza, which is home to 1.5 million Palestinians.
Since Hamas seized power in Gaza in mid-June, "Israel" has tightened already draconian restrictions on the movement of people and goods - fuel included - in and out of the impoverished, overcrowded territory.
The restrictions have sparked concern that the humanitarian situation, where the vast majority of people depend on aid, would deteriorate.
Amid the fuel cuts "Israeli" military attacks continued in and around Gaza.
Gaza militants threatened to fire longer-range rockets and target larger "Israeli" communities, after five Hamas members were killed in an "Israeli" airstrike over the weekend.
A spokesman for the Islamic Jihad group said its engineers are trying to produce local copies of Russian-made 122 millimeter Katyusha rockets, which have a reach of up to 30.6 kilometers, or half-way from Gaza to Tel Aviv.
Early Saturday, an "Israeli" air strike killed five Hamas militants near the southern town of Khan Younis. Eight others were wounded, one critically, medical officials said.
Hamas said the men were on a night patrol east of Khan Younis. The "Israeli" military said it carried out the strike after identifying armed men near its border with Gaza.
A senior Hamas official said his group was developing a more lethal type of warhead for the rockets it regularly lobs into "Israel", and Abu Mujahed, a spokesman for the Popular Resistance Committees, a group allied with Hamas, said his organization had plans to fire longer-range rockets.
"The real barrage of rockets has not yet begun," said Abu Mujahed, whose brother was killed in Saturday`s air strike, adding that "22 kilometers is not the ceiling."
Katyushas are deadlier than the homemade rockets and place larger "Israeli" communities near Gaza within rocket range.
Netivot, a town of 25,000, is 16 kilometers northeast of Gaza, and Ashkelon, a port city where 115,000 alive, is about 13 kilometers away.