Israel cuts electricity to Gaza to pressure Hamas on hostages

Israel has halted its supply of electricity to the Gaza Strip as part of efforts to coerce Hamas into releasing Israeli hostages and giving up its arms.

A Palestinian man sits in the doorway of a war-damaged building during the Muslim holy fasting month of Ramadan, in the Nuseirat refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip.

Israel said it was immediately halting its supply of electricity to the Gaza Strip as part of efforts to coerce Hamas into releasing Israeli hostages and giving up its arms, though Israel currently supplies little power to the enclave.

“I have now signed an order to immediately halt electricity to the Gaza Strip,” Israeli Energy Minister Eli Cohen wrote on X. “Enough with the talk. It’s time for actions!”

An Israeli security official said the only electricity Israel now supplies to Gaza is a direct line to the enclave’s desalination plant, and that power cannot be shifted elsewhere inside the enclave. Gaza gets most of its electricity currently from generators and solar panels, the official said.

Israel used to supply Gaza with around half of its total electricity before the current war began, but that infrastructure was damaged by Hamas during the group’s Oct. 7, 2023, attacks on Israel that sparked the current war in Gaza, and Israel hasn’t fixed it since, the official said.

The war has destroyed much of Hamas’s fighting force and much of its infrastructure, including facilities for making weapons and major tunnels that serve to connect important military sites, but the militant group still marginally runs the enclave.

While Gaza’s desalination plant is likely to stop working, the official said Israel still supplies Gaza’s population of 2.2 million with water from three different pipelines in the enclave’s southern, central and northern regions.

That too may soon change.

Israel’s move on Sunday is part of a series of escalatory steps it has planned to gradually ratchet up pressure on the US-designated terrorist group now that talks to extend a seven-week cease-fire have stalled.

Israel began this pressure by blocking the entry of goods and supplies into Gaza. Bezalel Smotrich, Israel’s powerful finance minister, said last week that the measures would include cutting power and water to Gaza and that the moves were discussed in a cabinet meeting.

If those steps fail, Israel could turn to a campaign of airstrikes and tactical raids against Hamas targets, an Israeli security analyst briefed on the plan said. Next, Israel could again displace the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who have used the cease-fire to return to their homes in the northern part of the Gaza Strip, the analyst said.

Palestinian women walk near a fallen minaret of a destroyed mosque during the Muslim holy fasting month of Ramadan, in the Nuseirat refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip.

Ultimately, Israel could re-invade Gaza with far more military power than it has deployed so far in the conflict, with an eye to holding ground and effectively occupying territory while it attacks the remnants of Hamas, people familiar with the plan said.

Out of 250 hostages Hamas and others in Gaza took on Oct, 7, 2023, Israel says 59 of them have yet to be released from captivity. Of those, 24 are believed to be alive.

Israel wants Hamas to release the hostages it still holds, something Hamas has said it would do only if there is a permanent end to the fighting, which Israel won’t agree to. Israel also wants Hamas to relinquish power and disarm, which Hamas refuses to do.

A truce between Israel and Hamas that took effect in January appears increasingly precarious.

A high-level delegation from Hamas has engaged in cease-fire talks in Cairo with Egyptian mediators in recent days to proceed to the next stage of the deal, which could open the way to ending the war. Hamas officials, however, indicated they would be willing to go for an interim deal to free American hostages held in Gaza in exchange for an extension of the cease-fire, guarantees to start talks for a second phase, and the release of Palestinian prisoners.

“We affirm our readiness to engage in the second-phase negotiations in a way that meets the demands of our people, and we call for intensified efforts to aid the Gaza Strip and lift the blockade on our suffering people,” Hamas spokesman Abdel-Latif al-Qanoua said in a statement on Sunday.

Israel had set a deadline of Saturday for the militant group to agree to release more hostages and has warned negotiators in the cease-fire talks that it will gradually escalate the punishment for Hamas to the point of a full-blown return to war, Arab mediators said.

On Saturday night, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said a delegation would be sent to Doha on Monday in “an effort to advance negotiations.” U.S. special envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff is expected to join the talks on Tuesday.

The Wall Street Journal