Arab nations condemn Israel’s Gaza electricity cut

RIYADH: Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Jordan on Tuesday condemned Israel’s decision to cut electricity supply to the war-battered Gaza Strip, calling in separate statements for the international community to take action.

Israel announced on Sunday it was disconnecting the only power line to a water desalination plant in Gaza, in an effort to pressure Palestinian militant group Hamas into releasing hostages amid an apparent impasse in truce talks.

Saudi Arabia’s foreign ministry expressed “condemnation in the strongest terms of the Israeli occupation authorities’ use of collective punishment against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip by cutting off electricity to the area”.

A Qatari foreign ministry statement said the Gulf state “strongly condemns the Israeli occupation’s act of cutting electricity to the Gaza Strip, considering it a blatant violation of international humanitarian law”.

Jordanian foreign ministry spokesman Sufyan Qudah called the electricity cut “a clear continuation of the policy of starvation and siege imposed by Israel”, about a week after Israeli authorities blocked the entry of aid into Gaza.

The United Nations has warned of “dire consequences” for Gaza’s population, while Britain said it was “deeply concerned” by the Israeli move.

Saudi Arabia called on the international community to “take urgent actions immediately”, while Qatar also urged “immediate action to provide the necessary protection for the Palestinian people”.

Jordan’s Qudah called on the world “to assume its legal and moral responsibilities, and oblige Israel to continue with the ceasefire agreement... restore electricity to Gaza” and reopen border crossings for aid deliveries.

Israeli negotiators were expected to hold talks with mediators in Qatar, part of efforts to extend a fragile truce since January that has largely halted the war in Gaza, triggered by Hamas’s unprecedented attack on Israel on October 7, 2023.

Meanwhile, Israel said that it was “encouraging” other UN agencies and NGOs to take over the assistance provided in war-ravaged Gaza by UNRWA, after Israel cut ties with the aid agency.

“We, the state of Israel, are working to find substitutes to the work of UNRWA inside Gaza,” Daniel Meron, Israel’s ambassador to the UN in Geneva, told reporters.

Israel, he said, was actively “encouraging UN agencies and NGOs to take over”.

For more than seven decades, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees has provided essential aid and assistance to Palestinian refugees.

But after Israel accused UNRWA of providing cover for Hamas militants and charged that some staff members took part in the October 7, 2023 attacks, legislation severing ties with the agency came into force at the end of January.

UNRWA has been banned from operating on Israeli soil, and contact between it and Israeli officials is forbidden.

The move sparked fears that it would hamper vital services delivered by the lead agency in coordinating aid to Gaza, ravaged by 17 months of war.

But so far, UNRWA has continued to provide aid, saying Sunday that since late January it had “delivered food assistance to the entire population of the Gaza Strip”.

During the period it also provided “over 412,000 health consultations and reached more than half a million people with shelter and non-food items”.

UN agencies and other aid organisations have repeatedly said that there was no replacement in Gaza for UNRWA, which is also the main provider of basic public services in the strip, including education and social services for registered Palestinian refugees.

But Meron said Israel was urging other organisations to step in, “each one in its own field that they specialise in”.

For instance, he said, the UN’s World Food Programme could deal with food, while “others deal with other issues”.

“There has been serious work... with the different agencies and making sure that the people of Gaza will not suffer because of the this... switch from UNRWA to other agencies,” he said.

He did not provide further details about other agencies contacted or how they had responded to the Israeli request.