Gaza Electricity Crisis: Only Sun Light Illuminates Homes (+Video)

Following the overwhelming election of Hamas in 2005 and 2006, the conflict between the Zionist regime and Palestinians escalated with the split of the Palestinian Authority into the Fatah government in the West Bank and the Hamas government in Gaza.

The Zionist regime retained exclusive control over Gaza's airspace and territorial waters, continued to patrol and monitor the external land perimeter of the Gaza Strip, with the exception of its southernmost border (where Egypt retained control of the border and border crossings were supervised by European monitors) and continued to monitor and blockade Gaza's coastline. Zionist regime largely provides and controls Gaza's water supply, electricity and communications infrastructure.

In the early hours of the morning of one day in July 2006, the Zionist regim;s  fighter jets bombed the only power plant of the Gaza Strip. The attack occurred after the arrest of Israel military force Gilad Shalit. Since that time till now, the Gaza Strip suffers shortage and cut of electricity and the issue has effected all aspects of life for the people residing in the area.

In an interview with Tasnim, the Palestinian analyst Hesam al-Dajani said, "The electricity crisis is an old and at the same time an emerging one. The crisis became worse on a daily basis and it has now changed in to a political crisis. The Palestinian ordinary citizens living in the Gaza Strip are paying the costs of crisis."

"The crisis has not only resulted in problems for the Gaza citizens but also it has affected their socio-economic lifestyle and their physiological status. Now, the problem deteriorated in a way that we are witnessing the deaths of women and children caused by the crisis. Many people are dying because of the fire resulted from candles that people are using instead of light to illuminate their houses."

The dissatisfaction among the Gaza Strip residents are growing because of continued cut of electricity together with the lack of enough fuel for small generators at homes.

Meanwhile, a Gaza resident said, "The alternative solution is that we try to use generators, which of course, their costs are high. Because of the condition that we are facing with, these generators are costly. Because of repeated cut of electricity, we as shoppers have suffered great losses since we cannot turn the generators on for 8 or 10 hour. Of course, using these generators has high costs and the costs of supplying their fuel and maintenance are also very heavy."

The Gaza Strip citizens’ rights for enjoying electricity has become a dream that will never come true in a near future.