GAZA CITY: Thirteen people were arrested yesterday as Gaza security forces broke up a demonstration backing Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas ahead of key talks at the White House, organisers said.
The rally was organised by Abbas’s Fatah party which is the dominant faction in the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority, but a minority in the Gaza Strip which is ruled by the rival Islamist Hamas movement.
Fatah official Mohammed Nahal said police attacked around 80 demonstrators as they were gathering in the square of the Unknown Soldier in Gaza City.
“The police and Hamas’s internal security forces attacked them and dispersed the demonstration. They arrested 13 people and beat up others,” he said.
Police spokesman Ayub Abu Shaar confirmed the arrests, saying the protesters had no permit.
“Police broke up a gathering of a group of people who were demonstrating... because it was unauthorised,” he said.
Abbas will meet US President Barack Obama today to discuss the crisis in peace talks with Israel ahead of a looming April deadline. Obama met Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu earlier this month as part of a Herculean effort to convince both sides to agree to a framework proposal to extend the talks to the year’s end.
Meanwhile, Gaza’s sole power station will not resume operations until today, despite Israel reopening a crossing to fuel deliveries, the deputy chief of the Gaza energy authority said on Sunday.
Officials had said Israel would allow the resumption of diesel deliveries into Gaza yesterday, a day after the Palestinian territory’s power plant stopped working because of a lack of fuel.
“The central power station will resume operations at 06:00 am (0400 GMT)” on Monday, Fathi al-Sheikh Khalil said.
“We were expecting the delivery today (Sunday) of 500,000 litres of fuel, but the delivery has been delayed, and only 100,000 litres have been delivered,” he said.
“We should receive 500,000 litres tomorrow.”
A Palestinian official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said: “Problems in transferring funds between the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah and the Hamas government in Gaza are to blame” for the delay.
A spokesman for COGAT, the Israeli defence ministry unit responsible for crossings into Gaza, confirmed that 100,000 litres of fuel were delivered on Sunday via the Kerem Shalom crossing for the power station.
COGAT had earlier confirmed that the fuel deliveries were to resume yesterday.
On Thursday, the defence ministry shut down the Kerem Shalom crossing into southern Gaza after militants there fired scores of rockets over the border, although no one was injured.
Israel hit back with air strikes, which also caused no injuries, and officials ordered the closure of the terminal, halting all deliveries.
“Defence Minister Moshe Yaalon... instructed to open the Kerem Shalom crossing for the transition of gas into the Gaza Strip,” COGAT said earlier yesterday. “The amount coordinated for today... is 500,000 litres of diesel and gasoline for the private sector, 160,000 tonnes of cooking gas, and 200,000 litres of diesel for the operation of the power plant in Gaza,” it said.
The power plant, which supplies some 30 percent of Gaza’s electricity needs, fell silent for 50 days in the latter part of 2013 because of lack of fuel but resumed operations in late December.AFP
