The Hamas enclave goes almost without electricity as the PA halts payments for Israeli-produced power
With Ramadan drawing to an end, the Gaza Strip’s two million residents are enjoying their Iftar evening meal breaking the fast by candlelight and gas lamps after electricity in the Hamas-controlled coastal enclave was reduced to a bare-minimum of 2-3 hours daily.
“There are problems between Hamas in Gaza and the Palestinian Authority (PA) in Ramallah, and that led the PA to stop financing the electricity,” explained Maj.-Gen. Yoav Mordechai of Israel’s Coordination of Government Activities (COGAT) to the BBC’s Arabic service in an interview.
Until the recent power stoppage triggered when the Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority stopped paying Israel to supply Gaza with electricity, the Israel Electric Corporation had been transferring 120 megawatts daily to Gaza. In the latest dispute in the decade-long feud between the PA and Hamas, that amount has now been slashed by a total of 40 percent over the past few days, leaving the Gaza Strip without power much of the time. Moreover Hamas doesn’t have the money to buy fuel to operate Gaza’s only power plant.
Hamas spokesman Hazem Qasem told The Media Line that Israel collects a custom tax on all products entering the Gaza Strip from Israel. But since Israel does not recognize the Hamas regime which took over Gaza in a 2007 coup, it sends the revenue collected to the PA. In turn, Ramallah had until recently used that money to pay for Israeli-generated electricity.
“Mahmoud Abbas is using this situation to achieve his political goal of ending Hamas’s existence in Gaza,” said Qasem. “He is using many ways, from cutting the salaries [of workers formerly employed by his government] to reducing electricity. That doesn’t serve the Palestinian people, and hampers any possibility of reconciliation.”
“Even before the PA decided not to pay for Gaza’s electricity, the Strip was suffering,” Abd-Alrahman Qobez, the Gaza municipality’s general manager of health and the environment, told The Media Line.
“The electricity situation in Gaza is a catastrophe,” he said matter-of-factly. Without adequate power, sewage treatment plants are no longer working, he noted.
“All the municipalities in the Gaza Strip are throwing the wastewater in the sea, and the Mediterranean is now polluted. The situation is getting worse,” Qobez warned.
“We can’t walk by the sea. You can see the two different colors and smell the trash,” Gaza businessman Rami Herbawi told The Media Line.
Herbawi, who owns the PalestinianApp, explained he hasn’t been able to house his staff in a single office since 2013 when the supply of electricity first became erratic. Instead “each employee works from his house. For the programmers I rent space at an incubator that has a [diesel] generator.”
Each desk at the incubator costs $100 per month, he said. Apart from Herbawi’s programmers, the rest of his staff have stopped working because of the blackout.
The Almezan Center for Human Rights in Gaza City recently published a report warning of the environmental consequences of the untreated sewage.
“Laboratory tests carried out by the Environmental Quality Authority and the Ministry of Health indicate the sea water is polluted and unsuitable for recreation. Of the 160 samples collected from different beaches along Gaza’s 42-km coast, 97 were polluted,” the report noted.
Gaza’s municipalities are limited in their ability to provide diesel-powered generators. “Municipalities don’t have enough money to buy them,” Qobez said. Donations received from UNDP and the Japanese government are running out, he added.
“The international community is responsible for what’s going on in Gaza,” Qobez added. “They should pressure Israel to provide electricity. Also we ask them to invest in projects to provide diesel fuel so we operate basic services.”
This week, Gazans received some good news about their mounting electricity crisis when Egypt delivered eight shipments of diesel fuel. A further 14 shipments were expected later in the day, but it is still just enough to power the electricity plant for two or three days.
Last week the United Nations along with 16 Israeli and international NGOs asked Israel not to reduce the power to Gaza, warning it could lead to a “total collapse” of basic services there.