Madison-Rafah Journal

Adel Zaanoun, AFP, 21 August 2007

The European Union said it will resume financing fuel deliveries to the Gaza Strip's sole power plant on Wednesday, after five days of blackouts in the impoverished Palestinian territory.

The EU suspended its funding for the plant — which provides about 25 percent of electricity in the coastal territory — over fears that the radical Islamist Hamas movement would benefit from the aid.

The European Commission said it will "resume Wednesday, on a provisional basis, deliveries of fuel to the Gaza power plant" but warned that it will take further action if an EU-Palestinian audit team monitoring the aid is concerned about where the money is going.

"The important thing is to get this fuel delivered again as quickly as possible, but in the proper conditions," Commission spokeswoman Antonia Mochan told AFP in Brussels.

The EU blacklists Hamas as a terror group and refuses to have any direct dealings with the Islamists who seized control in Gaza in a bloody takeover in mid-June from the moderate Palestinian Authority.

The EU said its decision came after its delegates met the new moderate Palestinian prime minister Salam Fayyad in the West Bank town of Ramallah, but linked future actions to the results of the audits.

Dor Allon, the private Israeli firm tasked with supplying fuel to Gaza, confirmed in a statement that the deliveries would resume on Wednesday, "following a request from EU officials."

Parts of Gaza have suffered from blackouts since late Friday, when the power plant reduced output because of dwindling fuel supplies.

The territory has been humming with generators to compensate for the cuts, but many families and shops without alternate power supplies saw perishable food stocks rot in their refrigerators.

Hamas had earlier denied it had diverted money from the electricity company after it seized control of Gaza in a bloody takevoer two months ago and said it would provide guarantees that the utility would function independently.

It said the power cuts had amounted to a "collective punishment of the residents of Gaza (which) violates all international values and norms."

Western-backed Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas called for the fuel supplies to be resumed, but said his Hamas rivals were to blame for the outages and hurting fellow Palestinians as it was pocketing money from electricity sales.

His office quoted him as saying the fuel cuts were "the result of the illegal takeover of control of the electricity company by the Hamas putschists, and the collecting of citizens' (electricity) bills to pay members of its militia."

Hamas has denied the allegations, saying it had arrested the head of the electricity company on charges of corruption.

The Palestinians have been split into two separate entities since Hamas routed security forces loyal to Abbas from Gaza on June 15, with the Western-shunned Islamists running the coastal strip and the Western-backed president ruling the occupied West Bank.

Egypt, which provides between five and 10 percent of Gaza's electricity, said the supplies should not be used for political ends.

In a separate development, Jordan's King Abdullah II has ordered the urgent dispatch of medical aid to Palestinian hospitals in east Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip, the palace in Amman said.

Copyright © 2007 Agence France Presse