Dubai: A senior Saudi official on Sunday extended "the hand of peace" to Israel promising the Jewish state full "integration" into the Arab world if it signs a peace treaty.

The statement came on the day Gaza, under continuous attack by the Israeli occupation, reeled under power outages as Israel continued to block fuel supplies from entering the territory.



Two Palestinians were also killed by Israeli fire, taking the Palestinians death toll to 39 in the past seven days.

A day after a UN official called Israeli actions in Gaza "a war crime," Prince Turki Al Faisal, adviser to King Abdullah Bin Abdul Aziz of Saudi Arabia, offered Israel a vision of broad cooperation with the Arab world and people-to-people contacts.

"The Arab world, by the Arab peace initiative [launched by the Arab summit in 2002 but shunned by Israel], has crossed the Rubicon from hostility towards Israel to peace with Israel and has extended the hand of peace to Israel, and we await the Israelis picking up our hand and joining us in what inevitably will be beneficial for Israel and for the Arab world," he said.

The Prince, a former ambassador to the United States and Britain, said Israel and the Arabs could cooperate in many areas including water, agriculture, science and education.



"Exchanges of visits by people of both Israel and the rest of the Arab countries would take place. We will start thinking of Israelis as Arab Jews rather than simply as Israelis," he added. "One can imagine the integration of Israel into the Arab geographical entity."

Meanwhile, for the third consecutive day, borders of the Gaza Strip, where most of the 1.5 million residents depend on aid, remained shut after Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak ordered the move.

Devastating impact

Amid dwindling fuel supplies, Gaza's sole power plant shut down, officials said. "Such a stop in production will have grave consequences for hospitals and water treatment stations," station director Rafiq Mliha told reporters.

The UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) warned that a shutdown of the station would have "a devastating impact on the lives of women, children and civilians generally in Gaza."

"Depriving people of such basics as water is tantamount to depriving them of human dignity," UNRWA spokesman Christopher Gunness said.