Petrol stations closed across the Gaza Strip on Sunday as Israel further restricted the limited quantities of fuel being delivered to the Hamas-run territory. "Sorry, no fuel, no benzine, no petrol" read a typical sign posted outside one Gaza City filling station.
"All stations in Gaza have been shut down because there is no fuel of any kind," Mahmud al-Khuzudnar, a deputy chief of a Gaza association for petrol stations, told AFP. The head of emergency services in Gaza, Muawiya Hassanin, warned that "there will be a big problem with hospital generators and ambulances" if the cuts continue.
Israel provides Gaza with all of its fuel but has delivered only restricted supplies since October 28, a month after declaring Gaza a "hostile entity" following its violent take-over by Hamas, a group pledged to Israel's destruction.
Last week Israel scaled back deliveries even further, officials said.
A Palestinian petrol authority official at the Nahal-Oz crossing, through which all fuel enters Gaza, told AFP that Israel has delivered around 190,000 litres of diesel a day since late October instead of the 350,000 litres needed.
But last Thursday it delivered only 60,000 litres and on Sunday only 90,000 litres, he said. Shady Yassin, a spokesman for the Israeli military liaison office with Gaza, said "the reduction was because of Palestinian Authority debts to Dor," the Israeli company that supplies the fuel.
In Ramallah, Palestinian economic minister Mohammed Kamal Hassuneh told AFP that the PA has honoured all of its debts and that the sudden decrease in fuel was because of a broken pipeline.
"The crisis today is not related to money," he said. "There is a broken pipe near Shujaiya (near Gaza City) and they are trying to fix it."
The limited fuel quantities reaching Gaza would not be released for sale in protest at the cuts, Khuzudnar said, adding that it would go into storage instead.
Hardened by a year of economic hardship, Gazans have for weeks been stocking up on fuel supplies, but worry about when stocks run out.
"I have about two weeks' worth of fuel for my car in my garage, but after that I'll have to stop using it," said Abed Lubad, who works in a hospital east of Gaza City.
Since Hamas seized control of Gaza in mid-June, Israel has sought to isolate the Islamists running the tiny coastal strip in response to continuing rocket fire from the territory.
It has further tightened restrictions on the movement of goods and people in and out of the territory, one of the world's most densely-populated places, and imposed sanctions including fuel and electricity cuts.
Israeli and Palestinian human rights groups had appealed to Israel's supreme court to halt the fuel cuts, calling them an act of illegal collective punishment that endangered civilians.
But on Friday the court said the state could continue with the restrictions, saying it was possible to do so without affecting the humanitarian situation in the territory where 1.5 million Palestinians live.
The court ordered the state to provide additional information on Gaza's humanitarian situations before it ruled on an appeal against planned cuts in electricity supplies, however. The final court decision on the planned power cuts is not expected for another three weeks.
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