Panic buying as Gazans fear increased isolation

By Nidal al-Mughrabi

GAZA (Reuters) - Long queues formed at fuel stations in the Gaza Strip on Saturday following rumours Israel might cut off supplies after the armed takeover by Hamas.

"Are we going back to the age of the donkey cart?" shouted a motorist as he surveyed dozens of cars in front of him at one station in the Palestinian enclave.

Fears of a tightening of a Western economic embargo and of another spasm of violence are gripping Gaza's 1.5 million people following the rout of Fatah on Thursday.

"We are destroyed. My sons are at home because I am afraid to let them go out," said housewife Umm Rami, whose husband is a colonel in one of the Fatah-dominated security forces.

Gaza's economy is almost entirely dependent on Israel. "Even our oxygen comes from Israel," Umm Rami said.

Israel has said it has no intention of cutting off food, power and other humanitarian essentials it allows to pass through the security cordon it has maintained on the 40-km (25-mile) stretch of coast since its troops pulled out in 2005.

However, the fighting between the Islamist Hamas movement and the secular Fatah faction of the Western-backed President Mahmoud Abbas has increased people's anxieties about living under religious rulers treated as pariahs by many states.

"I've had no sale since morning," butcher Abu Sharif said. "People are afraid the fighting will start again and above all, they have no money. No one is selling, no one is buying.