GAZA CITY (The Independent) -- Mansour Rahal lay unconscious in the intensive care unit of Gaza City’s Shifa hospital, linked to an electrically powered ventilator, the colored monitor above his head showing his heart, respiration and oxygen saturation rate.

On Thursday last week, the teenager was driving his donkey cart through Beit Lahiya when it was destroyed by a missile which targeted a nearby car. The rocket killed his mother and older brother, and Mansour contracted meningitis after suffering severe head wounds.
His hopes of survival yesterday depended on there being enough diesel to keep in operation the four generators which were Shifa’s only source of power. His doctor, Kamal al-Geathny, said: “If we lose power, he and six other patients in this unit will die.”
This was the scene at the hospital Monday before Israel authorized limited supplies of fuel and medicine to Gaza after a wave of international condemnation for its imposition of a four-day-old total embargo, which left much of the Strip without electricity. The EU called the blockade a “collective punishment” of the Palestinians in Gaza.
The embargo caused industrial diesel to run out, shutting down Gaza’s only power station on Sunday, plunging Gaza City into darkness. Large parts of it are still without power.
The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine refugees, UNRWA, transferred some of its own fuel Monday to Shifa Hospital and the European Hospital in Khan Yunis, which were running on generators because of the fuel blockade….
Israel’s Foreign Ministry spokesman, Aryeh Mekel, said 2.2 million litres of industrial fuel for the power plant, 500,000 litres of diesel for generators and supplies of cooking gas would be allowed in, along with 50 trucks of food and medicine, but the restrictions on petrol would continue.
UNRWA was also hoping for a delivery of the nylon bags with which it packs basic emergency food rations such as rice and lentils for about 870,000 Gaza residents. But Christopher Gunness, the agency’s chief spokesman, said: “ This drip drip, door closed, door left ajar approach makes it very difficult to provide for the needs of well nigh a million people in Gaza.”
John Ging, UNRWA’s director of operations in Gaza, said, “We cannot measure punitive sanctions, collective in their nature, by the number of rockets fired. One’s actions have to be measured against the rule of law, the legal standards that are the fabric of civilized society.”