In Hamas-ruled Gaza, many people feel depression and anxiety. It’s understandable. There are few jobs; unemployment has reached the staggering level of 48%, roughly half the working population. The only bright spot in employment is Israel’s decision to provide nearly 20,000 Gazans with permits to work inside Israel, earning wages three to six times what they could earn at home — assuming that jobs were available in Gaza. Hamas has ruled the Strip with an iron fist since 2007, when it expelled or killed its rivals in Fatah; there is no way for ordinary Gazans to rid themselves of the Hamas rulers whose colossal corruption has created a thin layer of a few thousand rich Hamas leaders — two of them are billionaires — who live in grand villas or abroad, in Doha, indifferent to the economic despair of the other 2.3 million Gazans.
Now researchers based at the University of Birmingham in the U.K. have just published a paper describing another cause for the mental distress of so many Gazans: the want of a steady supply of electricity. The people of Gaza must endure power cuts of at least 12 hours each day. To make maters worse, they never know when during the day or night they will have electricity, or for what length of time. They have electricity for a few hours at a time, on a rolling blackout.
They never know, that is, when they will have light, or heat, or be able to run a stove or a refrigerator, a television or a computer. Think of the constant juggling that must go on in a household as families try to adapt to a sudden appearance, or disappearance, of electricity in their homes, and also the effect of an intermittent and unpredictable supply of electricity to their schools, hospitals, shops, businesses. More on this finding, of a link between the lack of electricity to mental distress in Gaza, was recently published in a British medical journal, and can be found here: “Gaza electricity crisis creates major mental health problems – study,” by Judy Siegel-Itzkovich, Jerusalem Post, September
Gaza reportedly gets 120 megawatts from Israel, 60 megawatts from the Gaza power plant, and 30 megawatts from Egypt, but the lines from the Egyptian side were cut off more than five years ago….
The Hamas government in Gaza had relied on the PA to help provide electricity in Gaza; import duties on Gaza’s fuel purchased via Israel was collected by the Israeli government, which then passed those sums to the PA, which paid the bills to Israel and Egypt for the electricity they supplied to Gaza. The electricity plant in Gaza was shut down when Turkey and Qatar, on April 17, 2017, stopped supplying fuel to the plant. Hamas blamed the PA for the crisis, by not passing tax revenues to Gaza with which to pay for fuel for its plant, while the PA claimed that Hamas officials in Gaza were incapable of running the plant efficiently. On April 25, 2017, all power lines from Egypt to Gaza were down. The PA had ceased paying the electricity bills both of Egypt and of the Israel Electric Company (IEC). This electricity crisis in Gaza is the result, in the main, of the ongoing enmity between Hamas and the PA. In the end, the PA agreed to renew payments to the IEC, but at a lower level than before.
The PA was trying to undermine Hamas, and one of the ways chosen was to limit the Strip’s access to electricity by halting payment for electricity supplied by Israel and Egypt. The IEC, however, came to an arrangement with the PA to avoid a complete cut-off. The PA told the IEC that from now on it would only pay ILS 25 million of the ILS 40 million monthly bill for Gaza, and instructed the IEC to reduce supplies of electricity sent to Gaza. As Israel noted at the time, this dispute between Hamas and the PA over payments for electricity to Gaza was an internal Palestinian matter. And it still is.
Gaza has two main sources of power: the Israel Electric Corporation, which supplies power through 10 lines, and the Gaza Power Plant. However, the amount of electricity that reaches Gaza from Israel or is produced locally has been drastically reduced, due to endless terrorist attacks on southern Israel by Hamas and the Islamic Jihad….
The UK researchers, who published their findings in the International Journal of Social Psychiatry under the title “The impact of access to electricity on mental health in conflict-affected territories: An exploratory study in Gaza,” found higher levels of anxiety and depression among people who experienced a constant lack of electricity. Their sense of well-being improved as access to reliable sources of energy increased, the team reported.
It isn’t just terror attacks by Hamas and the PIJ that have led Israel to reduce the amount of electricity it supplies to Gaza. It is also the result of the PA’s decision to cut back drastically on payments for that electricity.
There will be many — at the UN, the BBC, The Guardian, The Washington Post, and The New York Times — who will reflexively blame Israel for the lack of electricity in Gaza, and by extension, for “harming the mental health of Gazans.” But Israel has not cut off supplies the way Egypt did. It has always been, and remains, the chief supplier of electricity to Gaza. Israel is not responsible for Mahmoud Abbas’ attempt to pressure Hamas by diminishing payments to the IEC, which is why Israel has had to reduce its supplies of electricity to Gaza.
There are two reasons why Gaza doesn’t have enough electricity to end the crisis in Gaza. The first is the massive corruption that has deprived the Strip of billions of dollars in foreign aid. Just two Hamas leaders, Khaled Meshaal and Mousa abu Marzouk, have each appropriated — stolen — $2.5 billion for themselves. Slightly lower down in the Hamas nomenklatura are 600 “Hamas millionaires” with a few million dollars apiece. That’s another few billion dollars. How many electricity plants in Gaza could have been built, and how much fuel for them could have been bought with the six or seven billion dollars that have gone into a few Hamas pockets? And how much more electricity could have been bought from the IEC?
The second reason for the electricity crisis in Gaza is Hamas’ decision to spend hundreds of millions of dollars not on paying for electricity from both Israel and Egypt, and on new electricity plants in Gaza, but on a vast underground network of tunnels extending throughout the Strip, so as to be able to hide, and move about undetected, both fighters and weapons. That network of terror tunnels has now been destroyed by. Israel, but Hamas, undeterred, continues to build more tunnels at great expense. In addition, while Hamas receives some weapons from Iran, it also buys weapons. And, of course, it has to pay the salaries of its fighters. All of this uses up money that could have been spent on electricity for the Strip. To govern is to choose, and Hamas has chosen war-making against Israel over electricity for Palestinians in Gaza.
࿗Infidel࿘ says
Let them do a deal. Israel will provide a power plant and electricity to Gaza, but in return, the Palis drop all muslim claims to Temple Mount, & let Jews rebuild the synagogue there
mike says
last I read a few months ago The Palatines have NOT paid for the power that was provided
He’s an Idea I sell you a product and you pay me for said product
࿗Infidel࿘ says
That too!
Hoi Polloi says
They can form a league with the Kill The Boers crowd in South Africa where quota hiring now means there’s no reliable electrical function. I mean, what rational individual doesn’t want to kill off and drive out those who keep an economy running? It’s all so civilized and rational.
࿗Infidel࿘ says
ANC South Africa is what “Palestine” would look like, if they ever succeeded in destroying Israel. South Africa was once a first world country, but is now a third world 💩hole. Sadly, a lot of Western countries are following suit as their woke politicians have taken over
Hoi Polloi says
Too true on every count.
Lulu says
Islamist, Arab racist attacks: before/during ‘Guardian of Walls’
https://archive.ph/v3JMv
Islamist, Arab racist attacks: before/during Op. ‘Guardian of Walls’
Rob (Robin) Blair Harris says
nn
Transmaster says
There is the bitching in the Gaza strip about the shortage of freshwater, The EU was going to build desalination plants to supply water Mamas turned then down saying the had plenty of water. They pointed to water supplies that were inside Israel, as if Israel did not exist. In their fantasy world it doesn’t. Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud in Saudi Arabia has told the Palestinians to go pound sand. I wonder what Hamas and The PA’s reaction is going to be when he joins the Abraham Accords.