The New Nation - Internet Edition

AFP, Jerusalem

Israel said on Friday it will maintain its closure of the Gaza Strip despite international concern over a deterioration of the humanitarian situation in the aid-dependent Palestinian territory.

"This decision was taken because of the continuation of Palestinian rocket attacks against southern Israel," said Peter Lerner, a defence ministry spokesman.

A flare-up of violence on November 4 prompted Israel to tighten a blockade it has imposed since the Islamist Hamas movement seized power in Gaza in June 2007. Since the recent surge in violence, only 33 truckloads of basic supplies as well as limited quantities of fuel have been allowed into the impoverished coastal strip. The United Nations has urged Israel to reopen the crossings, saying the closure of Gaza contravenes international law. Israel insists Hamas is to blame because it has failed to halt rocket and mortar attacks in spite of a five-month-old truce.

Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni demanded in a telephone conversation with UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on Thursday that "the international community stop applying a policy of ignoring acts of terror aimed at hurting innocent people."

Meanwhile, bakeries in the Gaza Strip will soon have to shut down for want of flour if Israel does not ease its crippling blockade of the Hamas-run territory, the bakers' association warned on Thursday. "All the bakeries will close in two days at the most if the Israeli blockade continues," the head of the association, Abdelnasser al-Ajrami, told AFP.

"Out of a total of 47 bakeries, 27 are already closed, while another 20 are only working part-time because of power cuts and a shortage of fuel."

Since a flare-up of violence on the Gaza-Israel border on November 5, Israel has tightened the blockade it first imposed on the territory when the Islamist Hamas movement seized power in June last year.

Almost daily over the past fortnight, deliveries of both food and fuel for Gaza's sole power plant have been blocked.

The result has been that the territory has received neither Israeli-produced flour nor grain for its only flour mill, which was forced to shut down on Wednesday, Ajrami said.

Chicken farmers in Gaza have also been hit, with a lack of feed or fuel to heat their chickenhouses forcing them to cull hundreds of thousands of fowl, the Hamas-run agriculture ministry said.

"Yesterday in a just a single day I culled 120,000 birds because I couldn't get hold of any feed or fuel," one chicken farmer, Raed Abu Ajweh, told AFP.

"If the blockade continues, I'll have to slaughter 475,000 birds by Saturday," he added.

The UN Relief and Works Agency was still distributing food rations on Thursday to the half of Gaza's 1.5 million population who are dependent on aid rations, after Israel allowed limited amounts of food in on Monday.

But UNRWA spokesman Chris Gunness warned that there was enough food left for "just another two days" of deliveries.

Cash distributions to 98,000 Gaza residents were suspended on Wednesday after Israel refused to allow the money to be brought into the territory, .

"These are some of the poorest people in the Gaza Strip," he told AFP.

Israel had been expected to ease its blockade after an Egyptian-brokered truce with Hamas went into effect on June 19.

It says continuing rocket and mortar attacks have made this impossible but Hamas accuses it of failing to deliver on its side of the bargain.

An employee walks above silos at the Palestinian flour mills company in Deir al-Balah, central Gaza Strip. Bakeries in the Gaza Strip will soon have to shut down for want of flour if Israel does not ease its crippling blockade of the Hamas-run territory, the bakers' association warned on Thursday.