Gaza's top energy official warned that power cuts caused by Israel's reduction in fuel supplies mean an especially hard winter for impoverished Palestinians, as human rights groups asked Israel's Supreme Court to stop the cutbacks.
On Sunday, Kanan Obeid, chairman of Gaza's Hamas-run energy authority, said Gaza now has only 35 percent of the power its 1.5 million residents need after fuel supplies were cut nearly in half.
The power outages, which will rotate across Gaza, come just days ahead of US President George W. Bush's visit to the region to promote recently restarted peace talks between Israel and the moderate Palestinian government in the West Bank.
Israel said the purpose of the cutback was to nudge Palestinians to call on militants to stop their daily rocket attacks on southern Israel.
Last week, along with dozens of crude homemade rockets, militants fired a longer-range Katyusha at an Israeli city, and Israel stepped up its retaliation.
"There is no doubt that this constitutes an intensification and escalation in terrorism perpetrated by terrorist organizations in the Gaza Strip," Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said on Sunday before his Cabinet discussed the issue.
He said his defense minister "has ordered security forces to intensify the Israeli response."
Five Palestinians were killed in Gaza through the day. On Sunday morning, Israeli forces moved into the Bureij refugee camp in central Gaza, withdrawing at nightfall.
Two civilians were among the dead on Sunday. One man was caught in a crossfire and a woman was killed when a projectile struck a house, witnesses and a Palestinian health official said.
Israel has been waging its military campaign in Gaza while trying to negotiate with the moderate West Bank-based government of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. Olmert and Abbas are planning to meet a day before Bush arrives tomorrow.
Israel supplies all of Gaza's fuel and 60 percent of its electricity. Even before the latest cutback, blackouts were common in the territory because Israeli strikes have knocked out electrical transformers.
But the impending cutoffs deepened the misery of its impoverished people as winter set in. They directed their frustration at Israel.
"The Israeli policy is not against Hamas, it is against us, the ordinary people," said Hassan Akram, owner of a grocery in Gaza City.
Israeli government spokesman David Baker said the fuel cutbacks were "geared to exerting pressure on the terrorists to cease" their rocket attacks, but added that Israel would maintain the supply of vital goods and services.
Ten human rights groups appealed to Israel's Supreme Court to stop the fuel cutbacks. Sari Bashi, director of Gisha, one of the groups, said in a statement on Sunday that the fuel reductions "mean longer and more frequent power outages for hospitals, water wells and other humanitarian services, in blatant violation of international law."
Hamas announced it launched three rockets into Israel on Sunday afternoon, a rare statement from the group, which has largely left rocket fire to smaller factions.
Hamas spokesman Taher Nunu called on Abbas to cancel his meeting with Olmert because of Israel's military operations in Gaza, charging that the meeting gives "political cover ... to these crimes."
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