Palestinian officials complained that Israel cut fuel supplies to the Gaza Strip on Sunday but Israel denied it had started to implement sanctions it plans to impose in response to rocket fire from the Hamas-run enclave.
Supplies have fluctuated in the past and there was some doubt on the amounts of fuel pumped across the frontier from Israeli suppliers to Palestinian businesses. The Israeli supply company declined comment on deliveries. It said it was acting on orders from the Defence Ministry which it would not disclose.
There was little obvious immediate impact within Gaza, which Israel declared an "enemy entity" in September. The government decided to impose fuel sanctions last week but said it would act gradually and aimed to avoid a "humanitarian crisis".
An official from the European Union, which funds fuel oil to Gaza's only electricity generating plant, said that pumping of this product had stopped from the Israeli side with about a quarter of the day's planned supply undelivered.
An association for fuel merchants in Gaza said only about half the day's expected deliveries of petrol and diesel had been made and that the Israeli supply company had told customers that it was acting on orders from Israel's defence ministry.
Mojahed Salama, head of the Palestinian Authority's Petrol Agency based in the West Bank, said Sunday fuel imports showed a 40 to 50 percent reduction in diesel and petrol supplies and a 12 percent reduction in fuel for the power plant in Gaza.
A spokesman at Israeli fuel supply firm Dor Alon would say only that it was implementing orders received from the Defence Ministry but declined to say what those orders were or whether supplies to Gaza had been cut. Israel's Haaretz Web site quoted the company as saying it had orders to reduce supplies to Gaza.
But a spokesman for the Israeli military at the Gaza border denied there had been any change in supplies: "No instructions have been received from the defence minister, and therefore there have not been any cutbacks," said Captain Shahdi Yassin.
HAMAS RULE:
Hamas Islamists routed the Palestinian Authority forces of President Mahmoud Abbas and seized control of Gaza in June.
Israel and its allies shun Hamas for refusing to renounce violence against the Jewish state, leaving the coastal strip of 1.5 million people effectively cut off from the outside world.
Food, fuel and other imports continue to reach Gaza by a variety of makeshift arrangements but the main commercial transit routes have been closed to normal activity.
The United Nations has told Israel, which withdrew troops in 2005 but continues to control Gaza's borders, it must not inflict collective punishment by denying vital supplies.
Salama, who is part of Abbas's administration in Ramallah, said he had been informed by Dor Alon that the Israeli Defence Ministry had issued an order limiting the flow. "We sent the supplying company the same daily requests but they said they were sorry and that because of the new imposed sanctions they could only send us a reduced quantity," Salama told Reuters. Mahmoud al-Shawa, who heads the association of petrol company owners in Gaza, gave a similar account.
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