The Israeli government announced Sunday that it will completely shut off electricity into Gaza, following the blockade of all food and humanitarian supplies earlier this month.

The total blockade is aimed at implementing the plan, first proposed by far-right members of the Israeli government and later publicly adopted by the Trump administration, to ethnically cleanse Gaza by making the enclave unlivable, forcing its people to flee “voluntarily” in order to avoid starving to death.

When asked, “What does Israel’s government allow to get into Gaza so far?”, UN spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric replied, “Nothing. I mean, there’s been no goods coming in. No trucks coming in.”

UN humanitarian coordinator Muhannad Hadi said:

The entry of humanitarian assistance into Gaza has been halted for nine consecutive days. ... International humanitarian law is clear: Civilians’ essential needs must be met, including through the unimpeded entry and distribution of humanitarian assistance.

“Israel cutting off electricity supplies to Gaza means, among others, no functioning desalination stations, ergo: no clean water,” said Francesca Albanese, the UN’s Special Rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territory, adding that it is a “genocide alert.”

Since October 11, 2023, Gaza has experienced a complete electricity blackout after then-Energy Minister Israel Katz ordered the Israeli Electric Corporation to halt electricity supply. On November 14, 2024, the South Sea desalination plant became the only facility in Gaza to be reconnected to Israel’s power grid.

The plant, Gaza’s main water desalination facility, which provides the majority of the enclave’s drinkable water, has been operating at only 20 percent capacity on generator power. The plant will be completely shut down within 10 days if the blockade continues, a spokesperson for the Gaza’s Coastal Municipalities Water Utility said Monday.

In December, Amnesty International reported that in several parts of Gaza, Palestinians had access to only 2 to 9 liters (a half gallon to less than 2.5 gallons) of water per person each day for both drinking and washing. This falls significantly below the 15-liter (almost 4 gallons) per person minimum required for basic survival.

Tania Hary, executive director of the Palestinian rights organization Gisha, said:

Cutting the electricity supply used for civilian purposes like desalinating water is not “using the tools at our disposal,” as Minister [Eli] Cohen says, it’s committing the crimes at Israel’s disposal.

As a result of the shutoff of electricity and fuel, Gaza’s food supply is just days away from total collapse.

Six out of 22 bakeries still in operation have been forced to close in recent days after running out of fuel, the head of Gaza’s bakers’ union told Reuters. “The remaining bakeries may close down in a week or so should they run out of diesel or flour,” he said.

As mass hunger stalks Gaza, people have been waiting in lines for hours for less than a day’s worth of food. “For every person, there’s only half a loaf of bread, half a pita bread. I leave home at 6:00 a.m. and return at 1:00 p.m. with just one loaf of bread,” 75-year-old Abu Essam Abu Sahloul, a Khan Younis resident, told Reuters.

Samah Sahloul, another resident of the city, told Reuters:

We used to have electricity to cook with, but now there’s no electricity, and there’s no firewood to bake in an oven. As for the children, how am I supposed to feed them?

Ghada al-Rakab, a mother of six living in a tent in Khan Younis, told Al Jazeera:

What kind of life are we living? No electricity, no water. ... What else is there left in life? May God take us and give us rest.

In a statement, Philippe Lazzarini, the head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, said the cutoff of food and fuel “is clearly a weaponization of humanitarian aid.”

Amnesty International spokesperson Erika Guevara Rosas said:

Israel’s decision to cut off electricity to Gaza’s main operational desalination plant, a week after it halted the entry of all humanitarian aid and commercial supplies, including fuel and food, violates international humanitarian law and is further evidence of Israel’s genocide against Palestinians in the occupied Gaza Strip.

She continued:

These inhumane and unlawful actions are a clear indication that Israel is continuing its policy of deliberately imposing on Palestinians in Gaza conditions of life calculated to bring about their physical destruction—an act prohibited under the Genocide Convention. They are also a reminder of the control Israel has as occupying power, allowing it to turn life-critical services on and off at any given point.

Seif Magango, spokesman for the UN Human Rights Office, told AFP that “blocking access to the necessities of life for civilians intended to pressure a party to an armed conflict through hardship imposed on the civilian population as a whole raises serious concerns of collective punishment.”

Even as it continues the total blockade of humanitarian aid into Gaza, Israel has only expanded its daily attacks on Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, despite a nominal “ceasefire.”

In a report published March 10, B’tselem, an Israeli human rights organization, accused Israel of carrying out the “Gazafication” of the West Bank. This includes mass arrests, severe movement restrictions, airstrikes and widespread destruction. From October 2023 to March 2025, airstrikes killed 261 people, a drastic rise from previous years. Mass displacement has forced thousands into makeshift camps.

The organization concluded:

Israel intends to use the shift in combat to establish irreversible facts on the ground: reshaping the West Bank to further its aspiration of permanently displacing some Palestinians and forcing others into living conditions that will eventually drive them to leave.

On Sunday, Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said the Israeli government is creating an administration for the “voluntary” migration of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip. “We are establishing a migration administration, we are preparing for this under the leadership of the Prime Minister [Benjamin Netanyahu] and Defense Minister [Israel Katz],” he said.

Endorsing Trump’s proposal for the ethnic cleansing of Gaza, Smotrich said that “sources in the American government” agreed “that it’s impossible for two million people with hatred towards Israel to remain at a stone’s throw from the border.”

He continued, “If we remove 5,000 a day, it will take a year,” adding, “The logistics are complex because you need to know who is going to which country. It’s a potential for historical change.”