http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2012/1086/re1.htm
23 - 29 February 2011
Issue No. 1086
Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875
Gaza on the brink
Gaza is on the brink of a humanitarian crisis as a result of electricity
blackouts and cuts to fuel supplies, writes Saleh Al-Naami
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Click to view caption
Palestinian boys hold candles during a protest in Gaza City against
widespread blackouts
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Contrary to his usual custom, Magid Abu Samha has stopped buying a week's
supply of fruits and vegetables for his eight-member family. The university
lecturer from Birkat Al-Wizz west of the Maghazi refugee camp in central Gaza
is afraid they will rot before the week is out due to the constant electricity
cuts that sometimes last for 16 hours a day and make refrigerators useless.
Electricity blackouts are only one of the innumerable hardships that more than
a million Palestinians in Gaza are forced to endure.
In order to accommodate themselves to them, people have had to alter many
aspects of their daily lives, with some families changing their sleep patterns
to coincide with the cuts and school and university students staying awake all
hours to take advantage of the few hours when their homes are connected to the
mains.
The cuts have also hit commercial establishments hard, with stores being unable
to display their wares and frozen goods vanishing from the market because they
cannot be kept under such conditions.
However, even if Gazans have managed to adjust in various ways to the blackouts
in their daily lives, the cuts have also exposed them to more serious risks and
dangers.
Gaza was plunged into darkness 10 days ago when the only power station in the
Strip ground to a halt due to a lack of fuel.
According to Ahmed Abul-Omrein, director of information in the Gaza Energy
Department, talks with Egypt over providing the fuel needed to operate the
plant produced "only promises", resulting in the blackout.
Should the closure of the plant continue, it will lead to a 70 per cent deficit
in Gaza's electricity needs, as only 30 per cent of the electricity in Gaza is
supplied from Egypt and Israel.
Unless fuel supplies for the Gaza plant are forthcoming, blackouts will
continue for up to 18 hours a day, with available electricity being distributed
across the Strip during the six remaining hours.
To make matters worse, privately owned generating stations have nearly run out
of the type of fuel needed to operate the small electricity generators that
families use during blackouts.
The crisis has also struck in the midst of a cold winter when the electricity
demand increases.
Many Gazans have reverted to using kerosene burners, and the rise in demand for
these, commonly used before the introduction of electricity into the Strip in
the early 1980s, has caused a rise in demand for kerosene, which has been
rapidly disappearing from the market.
As result, the use of kerosene burners has been restricted for essential
purposes only, such as cooking family meals.
The Ministry of Health in Gaza has warned that the lives of hospital patients
are at risk due to the electricity shortages.
Director of media relations Ashraf Al-Qudra said that the lives of 80 per cent
of patients were in peril, including 100 infants in incubators and 404 patients
whose treatment uses equipment requiring a constant electricity supply.
Al-Qudra said that 72 per cent of hospital fuel reserves had been depleted and
that they were on the verge of total paralysis. He urged all the Palestinian
factions to act quickly to save the lives of patients whose lives were at risk,
also appealing to Egypt for electricity supplies.
Hospitals are not the only worry, since municipal leaders in Gaza have said
that more than 200 wells, 40 wastewater pumps, four wastewater treatment
plants, and 10 large and dozens of small water purification stations are at
risk of grinding to a halt should the crisis continue, as will hundreds of
refuse collection machines.
The municipal leaders said that Gaza was on the brink of a "humanitarian
crisis", warning that essential health and environmental services, public
utilities, wastewater disposal facilities and hospitals were on the verge of
collapse because of the electricity and fuel crisis.
The Ministry of Agriculture in Gaza has also warned of an "immanent" food
crisis due to the electricity cuts and fuel shortages, saying in a statement
this week that the food supply was threatened with disruption.
Wells, farm machinery, processing and packaging plants, and poultry farms were
particularly in danger, the ministry said.
Meanwhile, hundreds of boats are trapped in port due to a lack of fuel.
The production stoppage in the agricultural sector was "another episode in the
string of catastrophes that has afflicted Gaza because of the Israeli blockade
and the lack of intervention on the part of the Arab and European states and
human-rights organisations," the ministry statement said.
The public transport system in Gaza also faces impending crisis. Because of the
shortage of petrol from Egypt, private vehicles will soon have to stop
operating, leading to a rise in the pressure on public transport.
Despite the crisis, the local governments of Gaza and Ramallah are still
deducting 170 shekels ($44) from every government employee's pay to help foot
the bill for domestic electricity consumption.
Under current conditions, many civil servants cannot see the justification for
continuing these deductions.
Ahmed Hamad, 65, told the Weekly that two of his sons worked for the government
in Ramallah, while a third worked for a government agency in Gaza. Together,
they have 540 shekels deducted from their monthly salaries, even though they
live in the same house and suffer from the ongoing electricity crisis.
A further cause of the fuel crisis in Gaza is political and related to the
internal rift among the Palestinians. While the Arab League has said that Gaza
can be hooked up to the regional grid that covers seven countries, among them
Egypt, this can only happen if the Palestinian factions reach reconciliation
first.
According to the League, Gaza cannot be connected to the regional grid in the
absence of a request from Mahmoud Abbas in his capacity as Palestinian
president.
However, it seems that Abbas has been treating the electricity question in Gaza
as one of the issues needing to be resolved as part of a comprehensive
agreement between the factions, and it has several times been on the agenda of
talks between Abbas and Khaled Meshaal, head of the Hamas political bureau.
Some of the pressures afflicting Palestinians in Gaza have been caused by the
Israeli blockade. However, others have been caused by the Palestinians' own
failure to establish a system of government that puts the welfare of the people
first.
Until such a system is in place, the Palestinians' daily tragedy is likely to
continue.
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