Fuel Crisis Threatens Gaza Food Aid

More than a million people in the Gaza Strip dependent on food aid have begun a fourth day with no deliveries of food by the United Nations. Other humanitarian agencies, including Oxfam, said that they too were suspending operations because of the fuel shortages that have brought the Gaza Strip to a standstill. Supplies of fuel to power generating stations were said to be 'on their last drop'.

The immediate fuel crisis has been caused by a strike of Palestinian distributors, who claim that the small amounts of fuel being allowed into Gaza by Israel are not enough to distribute without causing civil unrest. Rubbish collection for the population of 1.4 million stopped last week.

A hunger crisis is unlikely in Gaza, where most families receive their food ration from the UN agencies every three months. Yet uncertainty and fear is already sending prices spiraling in Gaza City's markets, where the price of vegetables yesterday was three times normal levels. Global food price rises have also hit Gaza. A tonne of wheat cost the aid agencies who supply Gaza $610 last week. In December 2006 the price was $235.

'The rises in food, fuel and other costs have added $11m a year to the bill for the UN World Food Program's operation in Gaza, which reaches 300,000 people. Hungry, angry people do not best serve the interest of peace. It is in no one's interest that hundreds of thousands of people go without UN food rations - which will be the case by Monday,' said Chris Gunness, spokesman for UN Relief and Works Agency, which supplies food to 650,000 refugees in Gaza.

United Nations staff, treading a diplomatic tightrope, have been keen to share the blame for the current shortages equally between Hamas, the anti-Israeli militant group that governs Gaza, and Israel, which has imposed a blockade since Hamas came to power in June 2007. Aid agencies say that Israel has allowed only some 55 per cent of Gaza's normal fuel requirements into the Strip during the period.

Israel has maintained the shortages are the fault of Hamas, which it accuses of manipulating the situation. But one senior UN staffer in Gaza, who asked not to be named, said that the fuel dispute was a red herring. 'Israel could put trucks in tomorrow to fill the depots.'