Agencies

The number of Gazans living in "abject" poverty has tripled this year to 300,000, or one in five residents, the Gaza head of the UN agency helping Palestinian refugees said Thursday.

Gaza's economy has foundered under an Israeli-Egyptian border blockade imposed after the Islamic group Hamas seized control of the territory in 2007 from forces loyal to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

John Ging, the UN Relief and Works Agency's top official in Gaza, called the rise in poverty a "predictable consequence" of the border blockade.

"The suffering, the impoverishment, the misery of the people here in Gaza continues to rise because of a man-made crisis, a political failure," Ging told reporters.

The blockade's toll on Gaza residents was compounded by Israel's winter offensive in the strip. Thousands of homes, government buildings and businesses were destroyed during the Israeli campaign.

UN staff said the rise also reflects improved monitoring of refugees' economic conditions.

The UN agency provides services, including emergency food rations, to 750,000 of Gaza's 1.4 million residents.

Those who are unable to feed their families are considered "abject poor" and receive extra aid, the agency said.

Ging said lifting the blockade is the only way to stop Gaza's rising poverty, and appealed for more funding to help his agency meet the growing need.

Israeli officials have said they fear that easing the blockade will benefit Hamas, and say they won't reopen the border crossings until the armed group releases an Israeli soldier captured more than three years ago.

A first sign of progress towards a prisoner exchange emerged Wednesday when Israel agreed to release 20 Palestinian women from its prisons in exchange for a recent video of the soldier.

‘Fatal blow’

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Thursday the United Nations would deal a "fatal blow" to prospects for Palestinian-Israeli peace if it endorsed a report critical of Israel's January war in Gaza.

Israel has been stepping up public attacks on the report into its three-week offensive in the Gaza Strip - calling it unbalanced and one-sided - before a meeting on Friday by the Geneva-based UN Human Rights Council.

"Advancing the so-called Goldstone report will deal a fatal blow to the peace process," Netanyahu said at the start of a weekly Cabinet meeting.

"Israel will not be able to take further steps and take risks for peace if it is denied the right of self-defence," he said, echoing comments he made last week at the UN General Assembly.

Formal negotiations on Palestinian statehood have been suspended since the Gaza conflict.

Richard Goldstone, a former UN war crimes prosecutor who led the UN inquiry, urged on Tuesday the 47-member state Human Rights Council to adopt the report, which found that the Israeli military and Palestinian fighters committed war crimes.

Adoption of the report would mean it is referred to the UN Security Council for further action.

Goldstone has urged the Security Council to bring the allegations to the International Criminal Court in the Hague if either Israel or Palestinian authorities failed to investigate and prosecute those suspected of such crimes within six months.

Israel launched the Gaza offensive with the declared aim of halting cross-border rocket attacks by Palestinian fighters.

A Palestinian rights group says 1,417 Palestinians, including 926 civilians, were killed in the Gaza war. Israel has said 709 Palestinian combatants, 295 civilians and 162 people whose status it was unable to clarify were killed.

Israel lost 10 soldiers and three civilians in the offensive.

In a briefing to reporters after the Israeli Cabinet met, Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon said Netanyahu's government was discussing the possibility of setting up an independent commission to look into the military's conduct of the Gaza war.

Air strike

Israeli warplanes bombed smuggling tunnels in southern Gaza overnight after a rocket was fired from the Hamas-run territory, but neither attack caused injuries, officials and medics said on Thursday.

The air raid struck two tunnels on the border between the Gaza Strip and Egypt, the Israeli army said. Palestinian medics reported no casualties.

Late on Wednesday, fighters in Gaza fired a rocket into Israel, with the projectile causing no injuries or damage.

And near the Kissufim crossing in the south, Palestinian gunmen fired mortars into Israel and the army responded with tank fire, again with no casualties, medics said.

It marked the latest violence along Gaza's border, which has been mostly quiet since Israel’s offensive ended with mutual ceasefires on January 18.

The ceasefire has largely held despite violations by both sides, but the past few weeks have seen an increase in both rocket fire and Israeli strikes.

Separately, a 20-year-old Palestinian man, Tamer Nahal, was killed in an electrocution accident in one of the smuggling tunnels, medics said.

Since Israel and Egypt sealed Gaza off to all but basic goods following the Islamist Hamas movement's seizure of the territory in June 2007, a vast trade involving hundreds of tunnels has developed along the border.

Since then more than 120 Palestinians have died in cave-ins or been killed by Israeli operations targeting the network, according to Palestinian medics.