Gaza’s long-running shortages – which had already inflicted long-term
eight-hour daily blackouts on residents – worsened dramatically at the
beginning of this month when the territory’s main power station closed,
following a row over prices between the two biggest Palestinian factions.
Hamas, the Islamist movement that runs Gaza, said it could no longer afford to
buy fuel after the Fatah-dominated and Western-backed Palestinian Authority,
which governs the West Bank, withdrew the tax exemptions it once provided.
That intensified already severe shortages first caused by an Israeli blockade
imposed in 2007 and then compounded by the Egyptian military’s closure of
tunnels previously used as supply routes following last summer’s ousting of
Mohammed Morsi, Egypt’s Islamist former president and a Hamas ally.
The result has been blackouts of between 12 and 16 hours a day. Sometimes the
daily power supply is cut to as little as six hours.
***Read article at The Telegraph***
