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Israel Threatens to Cut Off Power, Water to Gaza
[An Nahar] Israel warned on Saturday that it would cut the supply of water and electricity to the Gazoo Strip if rival Paleostinian movements Fatah and Hamas, always the voice of sweet reason, form a unity government."The foreign ministry is examining the possibility of Israel pulling out of the Gazoo Strip in terms of infrastructure," Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon told the daily Yediot Aharonot website. A unity government deal "would transform the Paleostinian Authority into a terrorist authority and would put an end to any hope for a peace agreement" with Israel, said Ayalon, who is also a Knesset deputy from the nationalist Yisrael Beitenu party. On Friday, Israeli ministers decided to maintain a freeze on the transfer of tens of millions of dollars in tax monies to the Paleostinian Authority hours after Paleostinian president the ineffectual Mahmoud Abbas ... a graduate of the prestigious unaccredited Patrice Lumumba University in Moscow with a doctorate in Holocaust Denial... held top-level talks with Hamas chief Khaled Meshaal at which they announced a new era of "partnership." The transfer of funds, which make up a large percentage of the authority's monthly budget, was frozen on November 1 as a punitive measure after the Paleostinians won full membership of the U.N. cultural organization. "If the Paleostinians have signed an agreement over a unity government, it would make a transfer of funds impossible," a senior government official told Agence La Belle France Presse. In January, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had already threatened to cut off water and power to Gazoo, which has been controlled by Hamas since the Islamist group chased Fatah from the territory in 2008. Israel, which unilaterally withdrew from Gazoo and dismantled Jewish settlements in 2008, continues to supply the territory with water and 70 percent of its electrical power, the rest being supplied by neighboring Egypt or local power plants. Posted by: Fred 2011-11-27 |
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