Israel Declares Gaza 'Hostile Entity'

Security Cabinet Says It Will Cut Electricity, Fuel to Hamas Territory

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, center, listens to President Bush, not shown, as he speaks to members of military support organizations, Tuesday, sept. 18, 2007, on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington. (AP Photo/Ron Edmonds) (Ron Edmonds - AP)

JERUSALEM, Sept. 19 -- Israel's security cabinet on Wednesday declared the Gaza Strip a "hostile entity" and said it would begin cutting electricity and fuel supplies to the Hamas-run territory in an effort to stop the constant rocket fire into Israel.

The decision further splits Gaza from the West Bank, the other main territorial component of a future Palestinian state, and holds potentially grave humanitarian consequences for the strip's roughly 1.5 million residents who rely on imported food, medicine and energy to survive. It also poses new challenges to the Bush administration's peace-making efforts, coming on the first day of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's visit here to promote a U.S.-sponsored meeting of Israeli, Palestinian and regional leaders proposed for later this year.

Gaza's crossings with Israel have been closed for all but emergency aid since Hamas, an armed Islamic movement, seized control of the strip in June after defeating forces from the secular Fatah party. Under the Israeli security cabinet decision, "additional sanctions will be placed on the Hamas regime in order to restrict the passage of various goods to the Gaza Strip and reduce the supply of fuel and electricity." It did not say when the new sanctions would begin.

"It's not a secret that Hamas is a terrorist organization," Tzipi Livni, Israel's foreign minister, told a news conference here after meeting with Rice. "Even though when it comes to humanitarian needs we have our responsibilities, on the other hand all the needs which are more than humanitarian needs will not be supplied by Israel."

In a statement posted on a Hamas Web site, Fawzi Barhoum, a spokesman for the movement, called the Israeli decision "a declaration of full-fledged war on the Gaza Strip."

"The steps are in preparation for a military operation that is looming with the Zionist occupation forces," Barhoum said in the statement.

Palestinian gunmen, including those from Hamas's military wing, have fired thousands of crude rockets, known generically as Qassams, into southern Israel since the start of the most recent Palestinian uprising in September 2000. Last week, a rocket strike on an army base north of Gaza wounded more than 60 Israeli soldiers on their last day of basic training.

With a flight-time of a minute or less, the rockets have proven impossible to stop. Israeli military ground operations, artillery fire and assassinations have had little effect in deterring the attacks, which have killed 12 Israelis and wounded hundreds of others.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and his defense minister, Ehud Barak, have come under increasing public pressure to stop the attacks. Barak, a former prime minister with ambitions to return to the job, first raised the idea of cutting services to Gaza earlier this month and suggested Wednesday the step took Israel closer to a broad ground invasion of the strip.

Israel withdrew from Gaza in the fall of 2005 without negotiating the terms with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, a Fatah moderate. Four months later Hamas, which celebrated Israel's Gaza withdrawal as a victory for its military wing, won parliamentary elections that gave it day-to-day control of the Palestinian government.

Hamas does not recognize the Jewish state's right to exist. That is in contrast to Fatah, which backs a two-state solution to the conflict. The 1993 Oslo accords, which Fatah supported, declares Gaza and the West Bank "a single territorial entity" for the purpose of negotiating the formation of a Palestinian state.

Since Hamas's election victory, the connection between the West Bank and Gaza has become virtually nonexistent because of Israel's frequent closure of the strip's passenger and cargo crossings. The Israeli government has argued in domestic courts that it no longer occupies Gaza, contending that it does not bear the responsibility of ensuring the welfare of its residents, most of whom are refugees.