Your Jizyah At Work

The United States taxpayer will have to foot the bill to fix the Palestinian power plant in Gaza. Check this out:


WASHINGTON -- The Palestinian power plant bombed by Israeli forces Tuesday is insured by a US government agency, and US officials say they expect American funds to be used to pay for the damage.

The destruction of the 140-megawatt reactor, the only one in the Gaza Strip, threatens to create a humanitarian disaster because the plant supplies electricity to two-thirds of Gaza's 1.3 million residents and operates pumps that provide water supplies.

But paying a claim on the plant, which was insured for $48 million, could prove problematic for the United States, which cut off funding for all infrastructure projects in the Palestinian territories after the militant group Hamas won legislative elections in January.

Administration officials said the restrictions on working with a Hamas-led government could further complicate the repair of the electric facility, which could take weeks, if not months, to fix because of the escalating violence in Gaza.

The bombing of the plant could become a lasting problem for the Bush administration, which is appealing for an end to the showdown between Israelis and Palestinians in Gaza.

Israeli warplanes hit the power plant two days after Palestinian militants attacked an Israeli Army unit, killing two soldiers and taking another one hostage. Israeli forces responded yesterday by entering the Gaza Strip for the first time since Israel's historic pullout from the territory nine months ago, bombing the plant and three bridges.

The power plant cost about $150 million and took more than five years to build.

Plans for it began in 1999, when two private investors -- the now-defunct Enron Corp. and a Palestinian-born construction mogul, Said Khoury -- laid down the blueprint for making the Palestinian territories less reliant on buying electricity from Israel.

The project faltered when violence broke out in Gaza in 2000 and when Enron collapsed into bankruptcy, but Khoury continued to push forward. His construction company's US subsidiary, Connecticut-based Morganti Group, bought out Enron's stake in the plant.

The US Investment Corporation -- set up in 1971 with US taxpayer funds -- had been supportive of the project from the beginning, arranging the first meeting between investors for the plant, according to the Bloomberg news service.

Few commercial insurance companies insure such projects against political violence, but the US Investment Corporation does so to encourage development in emerging markets, according to Lawrence Spinelli, a spokesman for the Investment Corporation.

The insurance that Morganti purchased covers ``political violence," which includes ``wars, acts of terrorism, things like that," Spinelli said. To be paid for the damage, the company must file a claim, and the Investment Corporation must determine whether the claim is covered by the policy, Spinelli said.