Israel is supplying the electricity for the West Bank and Gaza FREE?
It was almost poetic justice – a rocket that Hamas fired at Israel on Sunday night knocked out a high-voltage line that supplies electricity to some 70,000 Gazans. This was a blackout waiting to happen.
Literally biting the hand that feeds it, Hamas persistently aims at the very Ashkelon power plant upon which Gaza depends for its electricity. Israel has refrained from switching the power off lest it incur censure from abroad.
Neither Gaza nor the Ramallah half of the Palestinian Authority pays for the power consumed. Gaza alone, it’s estimated, owes the Israel Electric Corporation NIS 220 million (out of the staggering NIS1.5 billion of unpaid Palestinian debts).
The downed electricity line is one of a dozen high-tension lines with 120 megawatts per hour transmission capacity. Its loss means that the entire area between Khan Yunis and Deir el-Balah has been plunged into darkness.
The damage is reparable, but there’s no quick fix. In the best of times this job could take a long time. As things stand, with more rockets flying out of Gaza, no IEC employees would be willing to risk life and limb and expose themselves to Gazan predations just in order to restore electricity to Gazans. Moreover, no one asks them to.
As a PS, yesterday, HAMAS hit the SECOND electrical supply line coming into Gaza.
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