Israeli tanker trucks parked at the Nahal Oz crossing on the Gaza border were pumping 700,000 litres of fuel to the other side, enough to provide electricity to Gaza City for two days. Other trucks were delivering cooking gas, and a shipment of medicine was to be sent later in the day.

In all, Israel promised three fuel deliveries over three days, for a total of 2.2 million litres, enough to keep the power plant running for a week, said Kanan Obeid, head of Gaza’s energy authority.

Israel had sealed Gaza on Thursday last, halting fuel shipments. Three days later, Gaza’s only power plant, which provides electricity to about one-third of Gaza’s 1.5 million residents, shut down. Other areas of Gaza are supplied directly by Israel and Egypt, neither of which cut off service.

On Monday, after Gaza’s Hamas government and aid agencies warned of an impending humanitarian crisis, Israel decided to ease the blockade.“We think Hamas got the message,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Arye Mekel said on Monday after Israel announced it was easing the closure. “As we have seen in the past couple of days, when they want to stop the rockets, they can.” However, three rockets were fired early on Tuesday, causing no injuries.

Mekel said enough fuel would be shipped to power the Gaza electric plant for a week, as well as fuel for hospital generators and cooking gas, along with 50 truckloads of humanitarian aid, including medicine. The United Nations has slammed Israel for developments in the Gaza stressing that while the Palestinian rocket attacks are unjustifiable, the response by the Jewish state “cannot be a retaliation”.

Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas on Tuesday called on Israel to fully lift its blockade of Hamas-run Gaza, calling a partial easing of the lockdown “insufficient.”

 “This is insufficient and we will continue our efforts to get a total lifting of the blockade,” Abbas told reporters in the West Bank town of Ramallah after talks with visiting Dutch Foreign Minister Maxime Verhagen.