Shaked addressing the conference
Photo: Motti Kimchi
Shaked: PA, Hamas responsible for Gaza electric crisis
The minister of justice calls on Palestinian public and international community to pressure the Palestinian leadership to resolve the issue; she states Israel would be happy to completely disengage from Gaza.
The Palestinian Authority and Hamas are responsible for the electricity crisis in Gaza, not Israel, Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked said Tuesday at the 17th Annual Herzliya Conference. Shaked called on the Palestinian public and the international community to put pressure on the Palestinian leadership to resolve the issue.
"The blame for the power cut must be directed at Hamas and the Palestinian Authority," Shaked said in an interview with Tal Shalev, political correspondent for the Walla News website. "The PA has money and Hamas has money. We got to this situation because of a political struggle between them … and Israel refuses to be an instrument in their power games."
Shaked noted that former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon had first announced his disengagement plan from Gaza at the 2003 but said it had yet to disengage completely from Gaza. "We did not do so completely. We are still supplying them with electricity, water and other goods."
Gaza in the dark (Photo: AFP)
Israel on Monday began implementing a cut in supply of electricity, a move that the Bayit Yehudi minister said was aimed at removing Israel from the equation.
Shaked said Israel would be happy to completely disengage from Gaza and noted Intelligence Minister Yisrael Katz's proposal for an artificial island off the Gaza coast to supply the Gazans with their needs without endangering Israeli security.
"However," she said, "we must remember that Gaza is controlled by a terrorist organization holding the bodies of our soldiers and civilians, and we certainly will not engage in large projects as long as that is the case," said Shaked.
Shaked said Israel must make Hamas realize that holding Israeli civilians (Abera Mengistu, Hisham al-Sayed and Jumaa Ibrahim Abu-Ghanima) and the bodies of Israeli soldiers (Hadar Goldin and Oron Shaul) is a policy that will not pay. "The last governments have changed their perception of kidnappings. Hamas saw kidnappings as valuable, and we want to change the equation so that they will see it as a burden," Shaked said.
"In recent years, we have begun to do that, whether by returning the prisoners released during the Shalit deal to prison, by enacting laws making it more difficult to release incarcerated terrorists, or by cabinet decisions that have reduced the conditions of Hamas prisoners to a minimum."
"We have to show Hamas that as long as they hold our soldiers, they will not receive anything from us," Shaked concluded.
Reprinted with permission from TPS
