Israel has been reducing fuel supplies to Gaza for some weeks now – though tightened Israeli sanctions against the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip were supposed to go into effect only a week ago.
Gaza is totally dependent on Israeli supplies of fuel – including gas for cooking, gasoline for automobiles, and diesel to operate generators, hospitals, and public utilities, including the main Gaza Power Plant that supplies much of Gaza’s electricity.
So far, the supply of water to Gaza is the only one of three vital commodities controlled entirely by Israel that has been left untouched.
A group of some ten Israeli Human Rights organizations appealed to the Israeli High Court to prevent the fuel and electricity cuts to Gaza. The fuel cuts were authorized, however, and went into effect on 2 December. A decision on electricity cuts is expected soon.
Dor Alon, a private Israeli commercial company, has an exclusive contract from the Israeli Ministry of Finance to deliver fuel to the Gaza Strip. Dor Alon has cut off fuel supplies to Gaza four times since the spring of 2006, following a Hamas victory in Palestinian legislative elections and the installation of a Palestinian National Unity Government that included Hamas Ministers. And, acting on its own, on the basis of its interpretation of the Israeli Cabinet decision to label Gaza a “hostile territory” or “enemy entity”, the trigger-happy Dor Alon seems to have started the recent cuts in fuel delivery to Gaza ahead of time three weeks ago.
An Israeli High Court decision is imminent though still pending on whether or not to authorize cuts in the electrical supply to the Gaza Strip – that is, if it can be shown that any negative humanitarian impact can be circumvented – but there have been electricity cuts anyway.
The main Gaza Power Plant was destroyed in anger in June 2006 by an Israel air strike that targetted and destroyed, one by one, all the generators operating at the station after Israel’s Corporal Gilad Shalit was captured near the Kerem Shalom crossing point in south-eastern Gaza (in a Palestinian attack said to have been in retaliation for the deaths of most members of a Gaza family in a sudden explosion while they were at the beach for a picnic). A subsequent Hizbollah sympathy operation led to Israel’s “Second Lebanese War” in July and August 2006. Corporal Shalit is still being held somewhere in Gaza, and two Israeli soldiers seized in the Sheba’a Farms area are reportedly also still being held by Hizbollah.
Gaza’s Power Plant has been only partially rebuilt since then.
Emergency measures were eventually put into place: the Israel Electric Company has since been supplying some 40% to 50% of Gaza’s electricity, while Egypt provides 17 MW through a temporary line it built through Rafah.
Unlike Dor Alon, the Israel Electric Company has maintained that it has contractual obligations to continue supplying its commodity to Gaza.
(Both Dor Alon and the Israel Electric Company are being paid from withheld Palestinian monies by the Israeli Ministry of Finance. These supposedly blocked Palestinian funds are taxes and customs duties collected under terms of the Oslo Accords on behalf of the Palestinian Authority by Israel, but now retained — supposedly due to Hamas’ 2006 electoral victory — and only very sporadically released even to the now Hamas-free Palestinian Authority.)
Dr. Omar Kittaneh, head of the Palestinian Energy Authority in Ramallah, says that the Israeli human rights groups which are pursuing their efforts to block the cuts through the courts “are not consulting with us”. He indicated that he has not been contacted to outline or establish the impact of these cuts for the court. But, he said, “if they want to ask us to make a statement, we will do so”.
A gradual reduction in the delivery of diesel fuel to operate Gaza’s Power Plant began three weeks ago, he said, in the range of 15% to 20%.
So far, Dr. Kittaneh says, the major impact has been on the Gaza Power Plant’s reserves.
“Until now, we’re coping, and the reduction is not affecting our production. But, if it continues, in about one month’s time we’ll be operating on those reserves”. And, he says, there are only two week’s of reserve fuel in stock. “We have informed the [Palestinian] Ministry of Finance accordingly”, he states curtly.
At this rate, he says, the main Gaza Power Plant will be out of operation in six weeks.
Meanwhile, the European Union has continued paying Dor Alon some $10 million per month for the diesel fuel that is supposed to operate the Gaza Power Plant – apparently including the amounts that have not been delivered because of the Israeli cut-backs.
Egypt cannot offer an immediate solution to Gaza’s electricity problem – it cannot increase the amount of electricity it provides at the moment, as the line capacity is full.
However, Dr. Kittaneh indicated, Egypt has agreed to build new lines with a capacity to carry up to 300 MW of electricity. “We’re expecting the line to be in operation at the beginning of 2009″, he said. This could theoretically be enough to supply all the electricity needs of the Gaza Strip — though, Dr. Kittaneh noted carefully, “there are no commitments yet about the amount of electricity that will be supplied, only about the line capacity”. Tenders will be issued soon, and the cost for the new lines will be paid by a $32 million dollar grant from the Islamic Development Bank in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.
These lines will not be simple feeder lines, which send electricity in only one direction, Dr. Kittaneh explained. They will be two-way lines capable of transmitting electricity in either direction over interconnected grids, interconnectivity is the modern policy choice being made by every country in the world now, Dr. Kittaneh added. These interconnectivity lines will run from Rafah in the Gaza Strip to Rafah in the Egyptian Sinai — two sides of a provincial town that have been separated by war and occupation.
A connection from the West Bank to the Jordanian grid has also been decided, at a meeting of Arab League Ministers of Electricity last March — soon after the formation of the “National Unity” Palestinian Authority Government following Saudi mediation between Fatah and Hamas — and this decision was approved by all seven countries who are part of an interlinked grid of seven regional electric authorities ( Egypt , Jordan, Syria , Lebanon , Libya , Iraq and Turkey ), Dr. Kittaneh explained in a previous interview last spring
At the forthcoming donor meeting on 17 December in Paris, the Palestinian Authority will be presenting a five-year Master Plan for reviving the Palestinian infrastructure and economy – and this will include a request for some $200 million to develop the electricity sector, Dr.Kittaneh indicated.
Israeli and international sanctions were initiated to punish the Palestinian Authority for having formed a National Unity Government with Hamas participation after Hamas’ won a majority of seats in January 2006 Palestinian legislative elections. After a Hamas armed coup routed Fatah security forces in Gaza in mid-June this year, Israel has put the squeeze on the Gaza Strip — while international aid has begun flowing to the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank. With Hamas now in control in Gaza, Israel says it holds them responsible — and the Palestinian voters who elected them as well — for the small but steady stream of Qassam rockets and mortars being fired into the western Negev and southern Israel.
The Gaza Strip is one of the most densely populated areas on earth, with some 1.5 million inhabitants, the majority of whom are refugees from what is now Israel. In August 2005, Israel evacuated some 8,000 of its settlers – for whose safety and convenience the entire Palestinian population had been virtually locked down — and subsequently carried out a unilateral “disengagement” that left Gaza isolated and cut-off, and, as one Israeli human rights organization called it, “one big prison”.
A refusal this week by Gaza’s Union of Gas Service Stations to accept reduced amounts of fuel from Israel nearly brought traffic in the Gaza Strip to a complete halt. The Gaza Union indicated that it could not deal with disputes over how to allocate the little fuel available, and said that it did not want to become the instrument of the Israeli sanctions in Gaza. Mojahed Salama of the Palestinian Ministry of Finance’s Gas and Petroleum Authority was at the Erez crossing between Israel and the Gaza Strip on Wednesday to negotiate with Gas Station owners. He indicated that he had offered to release the entire Palestinian Authority fuel reserve in Gaza to the Union, but, he said in exasperation, “They refused to take the quantity offered, and they refused to pay”. By Thursday evening, however, the Gaza Union of Gas Station owners had reportedly reversed its position, and was accepting fuel.
The World Health Organization (WHO) has just put out a weekly situation report indicating that “the supply of domestic fuel into the Gaza strip has been restricted. As a result, some of the 11 hospitals that are operated by the Ministry of Health are facing severe shortages of diesel and most of the Primary Health Care facilities were obliged to stop emergency generators (no fuel or storage below 100 litres). If reservoirs are not replenished, emergency generators will also stop functioning in hospitals with low available fuel on storage such as the Paediatric hospital (current level 1,500 out of 10,000 litres storage capacity) and the Gaza European hospital (current level 27,500 out of 120,000 litres storage capacity).” Out of 27 clinics in the Gaza Strip, ten clinics currently have no fuel at all, and another ten clinics have only between 50 and 250 liters of fuel in reserve.
The WHO reports that fuel for Ministry of Health vehicles has not been available since the end of November. And, the WHO says, “A continued severe shortage of fuel and power cut at hospital level will cause the interruption of vital diagnostic services and equipment for curative care such as required at Intensive Care Units, operation theatres and emergency rooms and includes x-ray machines, oxygen extractors, central suctions systems, air conditioning systems, water pumps and laundry facilities”.
Gaza’s hospitals are running critically short of many vitally-needed medicines and medical supplies.
And, another impact of the sanctions is that some 30 critically-ill patients in Gaza have died in recent months either while awaiting or after having been denied Israeli permission for medical evacuation.
Filed under: Gaza, Israel, Middle East Peace Process, Palestine & Palestinians, Quartet
[...] deal was reported in a story published by this reporter in December (see UN Truth on 8 December here [...]