Qatar's bid to stem escalation of violence between Palestinians and Israeli forces

A truck brought fuel across Israel's border into the Gaza Strip on Tuesday in what sources said was a Qatari- and U.N.-backed drive to ease conditions in the enclave and stem any escalation in Palestinian-Israeli violence.

The shipment was a potential slap to the Western-backed administration of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, which opposed the foreign relief plan. Gaza is controlled by Abbas's rival, the Islamist Hamas group and the Palestinian president has been using economic pressure in order to wrest back control.

Under a blockade by Israel and Egypt designed to isolate Hamas, Gaza has plunged into poverty. Over the last half year, it has seen weekly, often violent Palestinian border protests and lethal counter-fire by the Israeli military.

The truck that entered Gaza brought the first delivery out of a $60 million fuel donation by Qatar meant to provide the power plant with enough fuel to operate for six months, local sources said.

The cash-starved plant has been providing Gazans with only around four hours of electricity daily.

A spokesman for the Abbas-appointed Palestinian Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah, who is based in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, voiced disapproval of the fuel delivery.

"Any international financial aid to the Gaza Strip should be through, or with the coordination of, the Palestinian government," he said, in order "to preserve Palestinian unity" and to stop any plans to separate Gaza from the West Bank.

A Qatari official, speaking to Reuters on Sunday, said Doha planned to help with Gaza's power crisis "at the request of donor states in the United Nations, to prevent an escalation of the existing humanitarian disaster".

U.N. officials could not immediately be reached for comment.

Israel's energy minister, Yuval Steinitz, told Reuters on Monday that Qatar "was trying to help" prevent a Gaza flare-up.

Steinitz accused Abbas, who has restricted PA funding for Gaza, of "seeking to make gains on two counts: by encouraging a conflict in which Israel will clobber Hamas and over which he will then be able to clobber Israel on the world stage".

Israel and Hamas have fought three wars since 2008.

Months of Egyptian-mediated reconciliation talks between Hamas and Abbas have been held up by power-sharing disputes.

"Abbas believes that if he keeps the Gaza closure tight, it will make Hamas accept his reconciliation plan, which would give the Abbas government full control - or the people in Gaza will launch a revolution against Hamas," said Palestinian political analyst Hani al-Masri.

"This is making it easy for others to bypass the Palestinian Authority ... They are trying to give them (Gazans) a sedative, sometimes through Egypt, and this time through Israel."

Palestinians launched the border protests on March 30 to demand an easing of the Gaza blockade and the right of return to lands that Palestinian families fled or were driven from on Israel's founding in 1948.

Israeli forces have killed at least 195 Palestinians since. Israel has lost a soldier to a Gaza sniper and tracts of forest and farmland to fires set in cross-border incendiary attacks.

(With inputs from agencies.)