Gaza electricty supply cut as plant stops due to fuel shortage

Feb 14, 2012, 14:39 GMT

Gaza City - Gaza's only power plant has stopped producing electricity due to a severe fuel shortage, cutting off 'major and vital' supplies to the strip, its Energy and Natural Resources Authority announced Tuesday.

'Now that the power station has stopped, we won't be able to fulfil the needs of hospitals as well as of water pumping, infrastructure, education and sewage services,' said Ahmed Abu al-Amrin, the director of energy data in the authority.

He said the plant provided 35 per cent of Gaza's electricity.

The fuel shortage has resulted from a sharp increase in prices charged by black market oil suppliers on Gaza's border with Egypt.

Previously, the Palestinian Authority (PA) bought the industrial fuel for the station from Israel, with fees collected from Gaza's electricity consumers.

But Hamas, the radical Islamist movement which has ruled Gaza single-handedly since 2007, says it has not been collecting the fuel money because many Gazan households are unable to pay.

The PA, in turn, has been unable to buy the industrial fuel from Israeli suppliers.

Over the past year, Hamas has instead brought in industrial fuel through the smuggling tunnels dug under Gaza's border with Egypt, but the smugglers have recently stopped supplying black market oil, demanding more money.

Al-Amrin indirectly blamed Israel for the power plant shut-down, while also calling on the Egyptian government and parliament for help.

'The Israeli occupation is responsible for the crisis, because it has imposed a siege on the Gaza Strip for more than five years,' he said, implying that this created poor economic conditions and complicated free-market access to fuel.

'If the Israeli occupation is turning its back on us, we urge the Egyptians and their elected parliament to consider the historic ties and responsibility of Egypt towards the Gaza Strip,' he said.

Israel has greatly eased the entry of goods into Gaza since June 2010, although exports remain highly restricted, hindering the strip's economic recovery.

Fuel is not on Israel's current list of items whose import into coastal enclave of 1.6 million inhabitants is restricted.

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