This article was originally published by Maan News and is republished with permission.

Palestinians wait in line to buy bread in Gaza City, after it was announced that the territory's only power station would cease operations yesterday afternoon. (Wissam Nassar, Maan Images)

Israeli security sources said that the total closure of the Gaza Strip's border crossings will continue on Monday despite decreased rocket fire from the coastal territory.

A humanitarian crisis is underway after the Gaza Strip's only power plant shut down on Sunday due to a shortage of fuel.

"At least 800,000 people are now in darkness," Derar Abu Sissi, general director of the plant, told reporters on Sunday night.

Israel imposed a lockdown on the Strip on Friday in response to a barrage of Palestinian homemade projectiles that continue to be fired into Israeli towns bordering the Gaza Strip. All movement in and out of the Strip, including shipments of food, fuel, and medicine, have stopped.

Omar Kittaneh, the head of the Palestine Energy Authority in Ramallah, confirmed that by Sunday night, the one remaining operating turbine powered down, and the Gaza power plant would no longer be generating any electricity at all.

"We have asked the Israeli government to reverse its decision and to supply fuel to operate the power plant," Dr. Kittaneh said. "We have talked to the Israeli humanitarian coordination in their Ministry of Energy [National Infrastructure]. We say this is totally Israel's responsibility, and that reducing the fuel supplies until the plant had to shut down will affect not only the electrical system but the water supply, and the entire infrastructure in Gaza – everything."

After months of increasingly harsh sanctions, Israel imposed a total closure on the Strip's border crossings, even preventing the delivery of humanitarian aid. The Israeli government says the closure is punishment for an ongoing barrage of Palestinian homemade projectiles fired from the Gaza Strip.

"Famine"

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180 fuel stations have shut down after Gaza residents went to buy gas for cooking.

Palestinian economist Hasan Abu Ramadan said the current humanitarian disaster in the Gaza Strip will be deepened by the blockade on fuel and food supplies. He warned that Gaza Strip could go from a situation of deep poverty to all out famine, disease, and malnutrition.

Abu Ramadan said that more than 80% of the Strip's 1.5 million residents have been surviving with the help of food aid from international organizations such as the United Nations Relief Works Agency (UNRWA) for Palestinian refugees.

International condemnation

Most international actors in the region believe there already is a humanitarian crisis in Gaza, including the UN's Emergency Relief Coordinator, the Undersecretary-general for humanitarian affairs John Holmes, who said at a press conference at the United Nations in New York on Friday that "This kind of action against the people in Gaza cannot be justified, even by those rocket attacks."

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon expressed concern, in a statement issued later on Friday through his spokesperson, about the "decision by Israel to close the crossing points in between Gaza and Israel used for the delivery of humanitarian assistance. Such action cuts off the population from much-needed fuel supplies used to pump water and generate electricity to homes and hospitals."

The UN Human Rights Council's Special Rapporteur for the occupied territories, John Dugard, issued a much sharper statement on Friday, saying that Israel must have foreseen the loss of life and injury to many nearby civilians when it bombed the Ministry of Interior building in Gaza City.

This, and the killings of other Palestinians during the week, plus the closures, "raise very serious questions about Israel's respect for international law and its commitment to the peace process," Dugard said. He said it violates the strict prohibition on collective punishment in the Fourth Geneva Convention, and one of the basic principles of international humanitarian law: that military action must distinguish between military targets and civilian targets.