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Israel to cut off electricity supply to Gaza

09 Mar 2025 4 minute read
Smoke rising over Gaza City – Photo: Anas-Mohammed

Israel has said it is cutting off its electricity supply to Gaza.

The full effects of the move are not clear but the territory’s desalination plants receive power for producing drinking water.

Sunday’s announcement comes a week after Israel cut off all supplies of goods to the territory of more than two million people.

Ceasefire extension

It has sought to force Hamas to accept an extension of the first phase of their ceasefire – a phase which ended last weekend.

Israel wants Hamas to release half of the remaining hostages in return for a promise to negotiate a lasting truce.

Hamas has pressed to start negotiations on the ceasefire’s more difficult second phase instead, which would see the release of remaining hostages from Gaza, the withdrawal of Israeli forces and a lasting peace.

Hamas is believed to have 24 living hostages and the bodies of 35 others.

The militant group on Sunday said it wrapped up the latest round of ceasefire talks with Egyptian mediators without changes to its position, calling for an immediate start of the ceasefire’s second phase.

The new letter from Israel’s energy minister to the Israel Electric Corporation tells it to stop selling power to Gaza. Israel had warned when it stopped all goods supplies that water and electricity could be next.

Gaza has been largely devastated by the war, and generators and solar panels are used for some of the power supply.

The ceasefire has paused the deadliest and most destructive fighting ever between Israel and Hamas, sparked by the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on October 7 2023.

Hostages

The first phase allowed the return of 25 living hostages and the remains of eight others in exchange for the release of nearly 2,000 Palestinian prisoners.

Israeli forces have withdrawn to buffer zones inside Gaza, hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians have returned to northern Gaza for the first time since early in the war and hundreds of trucks of aid entered per day until Israel suspended supplies.

The White House on Wednesday made the surprise confirmation of direct US talks with Hamas.

On Sunday, envoy Adam Boehler told CNN: “I think you could see something like a long-term truce, where we forgive prisoners, where Hamas lays down their arms, where they agree they’re not part of the political party going forward. I think that’s a reality. It’s real close.”

When asked by CNN if he would speak with the militant group again, Mr Boehler replied: “You never know.”

He added that “I think something could come together within weeks” and expressed hope for a deal that would see all hostages released, not only the American ones.

Hamas on Sunday reiterated its support for a proposal for the establishment of an independent committee of technocrats to run Gaza until Palestinians hold presidential and legislative elections.

That committee would work “under the umbrella” of the Palestinian Authority, based in the occupied West Bank. Israel has rejected the PA having any role in Gaza, but has not put forward an alternative for postwar rule.

Death toll

Hamas’s attack in October 2023 killed around 1,200 people, mostly civilians, inside Israel and took 251 people hostage. Most have been released in ceasefire agreements or other arrangements.

Israel’s military offensive has killed more than 48,000 Palestinians in Gaza, mostly women and children, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry.

Now, with the cutoff of all supplies to Gaza, Palestinians are reporting sharp price increases for dwindling items as fears grow again.

“Since the ceasefire began, the situation has improved a little. But before that, the situation was very bad,” said Fares al-Qeisi in the southern city of Khan Younis. “I swear to God, one could not satisfy their hunger.”


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David
David
13 hours ago

GENOCIDE.

Mab Meirion
Mab Meirion
10 hours ago

The brutality shown by our new axis of evil, matches the worst horrors of Africa and East of Suez.

That billionaires can be applauded for launching famine and disease on millions of people is grotesque, that they are so few yet all bow before them is as the blotter applied to our death warrant…

There are no better Worlds and the Earth will give up its Dead but when the prevailing wind approaches the speed of sound…

Mab Meirion
Mab Meirion
9 minutes ago
Reply to  Mab Meirion

‘Turning off Electricity’ that rings a bell, forced entry and disconnection…only two years ago in this country…

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