Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz has decided the Karni crossing into the Gaza Strip will remain closed on Thursday, despite earlier promises to open it indefinitely to humanitarian aid for Palestinian residents, Israel Radio reported.
Senior defense officials will meet Thursday to discuss plans to open the crossing in light of terror warnings originating from the Gaza Strip.
The IDF had been expected to reopen the commercial terminal following mounting international pressure warning that food supplies in the Strip were dwindling and likely to run out.
‘We had already informed the merchants that Karni would open,’ said Salim Abu Safiyeh, director-general of the Palestinian Border Authority. ‘The continued closure is causing humanitarian and economic harm to the Palestinian people, and threatening a real shortage in food supplies.’
The news Wednesday that Karni would open prompted Palestinian farmers to cancel plans to dump hundreds of tons of produce that has nearly spoiled while it waited at the crossing to be exported to Israel and Europe.
Israel closed the crossing for 21 days between January 15 and February 5. It was closed again on February 21 after a mysterious explosion in the area and has remained closed because of ‘continued security alerts,’ an IDF spokeswoman said.
But stocks of wheat, sugar and cooking oil are dwindling in Gaza and could begin to run out within two or three days unless Israel reopens the strip's main crossing point for goods, United Nations officials said on Wednesday.
David Shearer, head of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, said humanitarian conditions had deteriorated since the January 25 Palestinian election, which the Islamist militant group Hamas won by a landslide.
The UN attributed the growing problems to Israel's closure of the Karni crossing and other security measures. ‘This is getting to precarious levels,’ Shearer told Reuters.
Sugar prices have risen by more than 25 percent because of Israel's frequent closure of the crossing point, Shearer said.
Supplies of wheat flour to make bread, Gaza's main staple, will begin to run out in as little as four days unless truckloads of wheat are let in, Shearer said.
Israeli officials have defended their closure of Karni as a security precaution against possible Palestinian attacks and said they offered to reroute supplies to Gaza through another crossing, an offer the Palestinians declined.
But as international pressure mounted on Wednesday, Israel signalled that Karni would reopen as early as Thursday.
Israel ended its 38-year presence in the Gaza Strip last year, but retains control of all access points for bringing goods in and out of the territory, citing security concerns.
Shortages in Gaza have become so acute that aid programs are starting to be affected, said Arnold Vercken, the Gaza and West Bank representative for the World Food Program, which delivers wheat flour to 146,000 out of some 1.3 million Gazans.
‘For the time being, we are on hold,’ Vercken said.
Vercken said even though the daily flow of basic commodities into Gaza had stopped, ‘we're not talking famine’ as many Gaza households have private stocks of wheat flour that could last a month or longer. But with dwindling supplies and prices on the rise, poorer Gazans will be hardest hit, he said.
Vercken said wheat mills in Gaza normally try to keep on hand between 26,000 and 30,000 tons of wheat - two months' supply - but are now down to their last 1,200 ton of wheat.
Palestinians depend on foreign aid totalling more than $1 billion a year. It is unclear how much of that money would be withheld by international donors once Hamas, whose charter calls for Israel's destruction, forms a government.
Since Israeli-Palestinian violence erupted in 2000, Hamas has masterminded at least 60 suicide bombings against Israelis. But it has largely abided by a truce declared last year.
Israel has halted tax revenue transfers to the Palestinian Authority and has asked donor nations to freeze all but humanitarian aid to pressure Hamas, which will form the next government, to renounce violence, recognize Israel, and abide by interim peace deals.
‘It is not our policy to punish the Palestinians, not at all,’ Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni told a press conference in Vienna.