ISRAEL announced today that it was cutting off its electricity supply to Gaza, prompting renewed warnings of genocide.
The full effects of Israel’s move were not immediately clear as the Star went to press today, but the arid territory’s water plants receive their power for producing from Israel.
“Israel cutting off electricity supplies to Gaza means, among others, no functioning desalination stations, ergo: no clean water,” said Francesca Albanese, UN special rapporteur for the occupied Palestinian territories, on social media today.
“Still no sanctions,” she said, “no arms embargo against Israel means, among others, aiding and assisting Israel in the commission of one of the most preventable genocides of our history.”
Far-right politician and Israel’s former national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir welcomed the announcement.
“Gaza … must be plunged into complete darkness immediately as long as there are still Israeli captives [there],” he said.
“Israel should bomb the massive fuel storage that entered [Gaza] as part of the miserable [ceasefire] deal.”
Meanwhile, Israel said today that it will send a delegation to Qatar on Monday “in an effort to advance” phase two of the ceasefire negotiations in Gaza.
The statement from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office gave no details except to say it had “accepted the invitation of US-backed mediators.”
Over the past week, Israel has pressed Hamas to release half of the remaining hostages in return for an extension of the first phase, which ended last weekend, and a promise to negotiate a lasting truce.
Hamas is believed to have 24 living hostages and the bodies of 35 others.
Israel last weekend cut off all humanitarian aid to Gaza, an apparent war crime, leaving its more than two million people without much-needed supplies.
Hamas has warned that Israel’s latest blockade will affect the remaining hostages as well.
Also on Saturday, foreign ministers from Muslim nations rejected US President Donald Trump’s calls to “empty” the Gaza Strip of its Palestinian population and backed a plan for an administrative committee to govern the territory to allow reconstruction to proceed.
The foreign ministers gathered in Saudi Arabia for a special session of the Organisation of Islamic Co-operation (OIC) to address the situation in Gaza.
They supported a plan to rebuild Gaza put forward by Egypt and backed by Arab states, including Saudi Arabia and Jordan.
Without mentioning Mr Trump, the ministers’ statement said that they rejected “plans aimed at displacing the Palestinian people individually or collectively … as ethnic cleansing, a grave violation of international law and a crime against humanity.”
They also condemned “policies of starvation” they said aim to push Palestinians to leave, a reference to Israel's cutting off all supplies to Gaza.
Mr Trump has called for Gaza’s population to be “resettled” elsewhere, permanently, so that the US can take over the territory and develop it for others. Palestinians have rejected calls to leave.
The ministers at the OIC gathering supported a proposal that an administrative committee replace Hamas in governing Gaza.
The committee would work “under the umbrella” of the Palestinian Authority (PA), based in the occupied West Bank.
Israel has rejected the PA having any role in Gaza, but hasn’t put forward an alternative for postwar rule.
The foreign ministers of France, Germany, Italy and Britain said in a joint statement that they welcome the Arab initiative for a Gaza reconstruction plan, calling it “a realistic path.”
They added that “Hamas must neither govern Gaza nor be a threat to Israel anymore,” and they support the central role for the PA.
Early on Saturday, an Israeli strike killed two Palestinians in the southernmost city of Rafah, the Health Ministry there said.
The Israeli military said that it struck several men who appeared to be flying a drone that entered Israel.
Israel’s military offensive has killed more than 48,000 Palestinians in Gaza, mostly women and children, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry.