Minister: Hamas an assailant posing as a victim
Government members express their rage over Palestinians' claims that Israel has cut off fuel supply to Gaza, causing a humanitarian crisis
"Hamas shamelessly carried out a terror attack and murdered those operating the fuel terminal, and then dares to cry out that 'there is a humanitarian crisis in Gaza.' This is a lie, this is an assailant posing as a victim," Housing and Construction Minister Ze'ev Boim (Kadima) said before the weekly cabinet meeting.
Minister Boim also believes that Hamas' claims are an attempt to create a fictitious crisis. "Israel is doing all it can and will continue to work to prevent a humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip," he said.
Addressing Hamas' threats to re-breach the border with Egypt, Boim said, "I believe the Egyptians have learned their lesson. I don’t think they'll allow it. The Egyptians understand today who we're all dealing with. The cold relations between them and Hamas are not coincidental."
Minister of Religious Affairs Yitzhak Cohen (Shas) noted that terror organizations in the Strip were also firing rockets at the Ashkelon power plant, which supplies electricity to Gaza.
"They will eventually cause an electrical blackout, and the same will happen in regards to Mekorot's pumping stations – following the rocket fire the water supply will be halted."
Cohen said that the Palestinians were the ones determining whether their power, fuel or water supplies would be cut off – according to the targets they fire at.
Palestinians: No fuel – no electricity
The director of Gaza's only power plant said Saturday he would have to shut it down in two to three days unless Israel resumed fuel shipments.
Israel halted supplies after Palestinian gunmen attacked a fuel depot on the Gaza-Israel border last week and killed two Israeli workers - Oleg Lipson, 37, and Lev Charniak, 53, both of Beersheba.
The power plant's fuel reserves have been low in recent months, after Israel restricted fuel supplies in hopes of forcing militants to halt rocket attacks from Gaza.
Power plant director Rafiq Maliha said he only has two to three days worth of fuel left to run the plant. The plant shut down once before, after Israeli halted fuel shipments for several days following a barrage of rocket attacks from Gaza.
Military officials stressed in response that over the past week, even before Wednesday's terror attack, the Palestinians did not even use the diesel and fuel delivered from Israel.
In fact, a source said, the terminal was only closed on Thursday, and still has reservoirs which did not enter the Strip. The army plans to resume the activity in the Nahal Oz depot in the coming days, perhaps already on Sunday.
"This is another manipulation by Hamas, which is trying to achieve international legitimacy and divert the Palestinian population's attention from the internal problems in the Strip towards Israel, even though this is all false," a source said.
