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Strangling a people...whilst the world sits idly bye

Need anything more be said than that the cutting off of power by the Israelis to Gaza - and all that that entails for the 1.5 million Gazans - is an absolute disgrace. And what is the world saying about it? Very little.

Information Clearing House reports "People are dying, Help us!":

"A humanitarian crisis is underway as the Gaza Strip's only power plant began to shut down on Sunday, and the tiny coastal territory entered its third full day without shipments of vital food and fuel supplies due to Israel's punitive sanctions.

The Gaza Strip's power plant has completely shut down on Sunday because it no longer has the fuel needed to keep running. One of the plant's two electricity-generating turbines had already shut down by noon.

This will drastically reduce output to 25 or 30 megawatts, down from the 65 megawatts the plant produces under normal conditions. By Sunday evening the plant will shut down completely, leaving large swaths of the Gaza Strip in darkness.

Omar Kittaneh, the head of the Palestine Energy Authority in Ramallah, confirmed that by tonight, the one remaining operating turbine will be powered down, and the Gaza power plant will no longer be generating any electricity at all."

A piece in The Guardian "West Bank bantustan" doesn't make for much more happy reading:

"Since the only Palestinian 'state' the current peace process can deliver is another Gaza-style enclave, this upsurge of violence is hardly encouraging."

Over at Haaretz Gideon Levy rightly questions what Israel thinks it is achieving with its present policies and actions:

"Has the daily mass killing in Gaza improved the security situation? No, it has only made it worse. Has it reduced the number of Qassams? No, it has led to their proliferation. So why are we killing? We need "to do something" and there needs to be "a price tag." These are hollow cliches. A review of recent newspapers presents a clear picture: As long as the U.S. president was still in the country, Israel refrained from liquidations, and the number of Qassams decreased. When George Bush left, we resumed killing and, as a result, Sderot has faced the most difficult days it has ever known. The burning question that arises is: What are we killing for? Someone must answer this."

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