The Minister of Energy, Eli Cohen, asked the Israel Electric Corporation on Sunday to immediately cut the power supply of the electricity to the Gaza strip, in an apparent attempt to collapse the pressure on the enclave, where 24 alleged hostages are alive, and the bodies of 35 others, are still detained.
“We will use all the tools at our disposal so that all hostages come back, and we will make sure that Hamas will not be in Gaza on the” day after “,” said Cohen in a short video press release.
Cohen’s office has circulated a letter sent to the CEI Commander to stop selling electricity to power plants in Gaza.
However, an Israeli official told Israel Times than Cohen’s decision was less dramatic than he made. Israel’s electricity in Gaza was cut after October 7, but in November, Israel announced that it was renewing the supply of a desalination plant near Deir El-Balah in the center of Gaza. Israel has reduced the power of this factory, said the manager.
The factory serves more than 600,000 residents of Gaza by means of oil tankers or the networks of governors of Deir El-Balah and Khan Younis in the center and south of Gaza, respectively. This is one of these three of these seawater processing facilities in the Gaza Strip, which before the war met about 15% of the 2 million residents in water.
This decision reached after that Israel announced on March 2 that it interrupted the entry of goods in Gaza, on what it said to be the refusal of the Hamas terrorist group to accept a proposal to extend the initial stage of the Liberation Agreement of Cease-Le-Feu and Hostage, and threatened with “additional consequences” and a return to war.
The judgment to help aroused criticism from Western governments, as well as the conviction of the Arab countries which accused Israel of using “famine” as a weapon. The United States has supported the movement.
Israel said that there was enough help accumulated in Gaza to meet the needs of its population, and that Hamas uses the supply of goods to strengthen its enclave control and finance its attacks on Israel.
The Palestinian queue to receive food aid from a UNRWA distribution center at the Nuseirat refugee camp in the Gaza Central Strip on March 3, 2025. (Eyad Baba / AFP)
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said last week that he was ready to increase the pressure and did not exclude cutting all the electricity in Gaza if Hamas did not move his talks to release the hostages and put an end to the war.
The first phase of the hostage fire agreement which entered into force on January 19 saw an influx of humanitarian aid in Gaza, after more than a year of battles launched by the invasion led by Southern Hamas of Israel on October 7, 2023, when thousands of terrorists killed some 1,200 people and took 251 hostages.
The discussions concerning the terms of a second phase were supposed to have started on February 3, but Israel actually refused to commit to it, because phase two would oblige Israel to fully withdraw from Gaza and to accept a permanent end in the war in exchange for the remaining living hostages.
The discussions, including unprecedented direct discussions between the United States and Hamas, continued alternative executives who would see a temporary extension of the ceasefire in exchange for a limited hostage version. Israel will send a delegation to Doha on Monday for talks, Netanyahu said on Sunday.
The Wall Street Journal reported during the weekend that Israel provided for a climbing campaign against Hamas if Netanyahu finally decides that hostage talks are sterile or that the requests of the terrorist group are too high. The report indicated that Israel may have cut electricity and water as a next step.
