GAZA CITY, 26 July 2006 — Citing it as a “clear” example of disproportionate use of force, UN humanitarian coordinator Jan Egeland yesterday blasted Israel’s strike last month on the sole power plant in Gaza Strip.
Palestinian officials at the plant warned it would take months and cost millions to repair the transformers, which have been nonoperational since the raid, enforcing electricity rationing and provoking health concerns.
“This a very clear disproportional use. Maybe this is the clearest of it all,” Egeland told reporters as he toured the Gaza power plant which had supplied 70 percent of the power to the 1.4 million residents.
“Civilian infrastructure is protected... the law is very clear,” he said.
Israel fired eight missiles into the plant’s six transformers not long after midnight on June 28, launching a huge offensive after two Israeli soldiers were killed and a third snatched in a cross-border raid. Yesterday, one Palestinian youth was killed in tank fire and eight others were wounded in airstrikes on three houses in the Gaza Strip, medical sources said.
Also yesterday, a 29-year-old Palestinian died of wounds sustained during an Israeli ground operation in the Mughazi refugee camp in the Gaza Strip on July 20.
One house in eastern Gaza City was reduced to rubble by one rocket which caused four injuries.
In the southern Gaza town of Rafah, two houses sustained massive damage in the air raid where four others were wounded.
Meanwhile, Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh yesterday said the US view of a new Middle East was one that began with “destroying Lebanon” and with killing the maximum number of Palestinians.
“In the name of the government, we condemn the American positions... giving the green light to the occupation to continue its aggressions,” Haniyeh told the Cabinet. “It seems that from the American point of view, the new Middle East starts by destroying Lebanon, by killing the maximum number of our Palestinian people and by bringing down the resistance,” he said.
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had said earlier in Jerusalem that it was “time for a new Middle East” as she began talks with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on the Lebanon conflict, before meeting Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in the West Bank.
Haniyeh slammed what he called a “dangerous escalation in Israeli aggression” over what he said were F-16 warplanes targeting homes while people were inside.
“This is a very dangerous escalation and we call on the American administration to stop this dangerous escalation against the civilians.” Israel last Thursday warned civilians in Gaza that homes storing weapons were a direct target in a massive offensive.
— With input from agencies
