'A disaster for everybody'

UN official says Israel's blockade of Gaza is feeding a 'growing sense of injustice' among its population

Gaza's population has been reduced to a "subhuman existence" where basic humanitarian needs are going unmet in the face of rapidly deteriorating conditions, according to a senior UN official.

An Israeli economic blockade on the Gaza Strip, home to 1.5 million Palestinians, has produced shortages of fuel and basic supplies and has closed most private businesses and pushed up poverty rates.

John Ging, director of operations in Gaza for the UN Refugee and Works Agency, which supports Palestinian refugees, said the crisis and continuing toll of civilian deaths were feeding a "growing sense of injustice" among Gaza's population.

"It is a disaster for everybody because it's touching everybody in every aspect of their life, from the moment you get up in the morning until you go to bed at night," he said. "The way things have been reduced here, there's a very sub-human existence for the general population."

Israel has significantly reduced the amount of fuel it sells to Gaza and there are now such shortages of diesel and petrol that many cars run on cooking gas or vegetable oil and that many schools can now longer bus their pupils to class.

Israel only allows 2.2m litres of industrial diesel into Gaza for the strip's sole power plant each week, which means it can produce just 45-55mW of electricity, compared to 80mW if it was fully fuelled, and the more than 100mW it was able to produce before the plant's transformers were bombed by Israeli aircraft two years ago. On Saturday, the power plant cut back its output even further, leaving most of Gaza City in darkness for several hours, because not enough fuel had been supplied.

Fuel shortages have affected water systems, leaving the 70,000 people who rely on water from fuel-pumped wells with a precarious supply, and meaning that 60m litres of raw and partially treated sewage are being pumped straight into the sea every day. More than two-thirds of Gaza's 4,000 agricultural water wells rely on fuel-powered pumps, and shortages are leaving crops to die. The World Bank said last month that poverty rates in Gaza were now close to 67% and that economic growth was zero last year. More