A Gaza firm that runs water desalination plants supplying nearly half the enclave’s two million residents halted operations on Tuesday to protest the abduction of one of its employees by Hamas terrorists a day earlier.
Youssef Yassin, a board member of the Abdul Salam Yassin Company, told Reuters that over 70 trucks that carry water containers across the Strip have also stopped operations following Monday’s kidnapping.
“I know it is catastrophic, but protecting our employees is a sacred issue,” Yassin told the news wire agency. He said that the terrorist organization had not given a reason for the employee’s “arrest.”
In July, Israel reactivated one power line to the Gaza, four months after cutting the flow of electricity to the enclave due to Hamas’s rejection of the ceasefire extension proposed by U.S. Mideast envoy Steve Witkoff.
The Kela power line was reactivated “for the purpose of operating the southern desalination facility in Gaza,” the Israeli Defense Ministry’s Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories unit told JNS.
The decision to reconnect the European Union-funded desalination plant in Deir el-Balah—the only one in Gaza—to the Israeli power grid was made during a Cabinet discussion on July 5 and came in response to mounting international pressure, Israel’s Channel 14 News reported.
