By Eva Bartlett - Gaza
(Eva Bartlett is a Canadian human rights advocate and freelancer who spent eight months in 2007 living in West Bank communities and four months in Cairo and at the Rafah crossing. She is currently based in Gaza, after the third successful voyage of the Free Gaza movement to break the siege on Gaza)
Palestine Chronicle
"Gaza is host to a new power outage.
It came the evening of the day when a delegation of 11 European Members of Parliament had visited Gaza's only power plant, which supplies about 1/3 the electricity used in Gaza (the amount used, not the amount needed. People are making due with regular power cuts, particularly in the northern areas of the Strip).
The plant used to supply 50% of Gaza's needs before Israel bombed it in June 2006, destroying all 6 of the plant's large transformers. Since then, ten smaller, temporary transformers have had to function, inadequately, as permanent replacements. With the siege on Gaza, importing new transformers, or even replacements parts, has become impossible.....
Aware that I would have no power later to do any writing, I was acutely more aware that hospitals would be at the mercy of their expensive, diesel-powered generators; that water would continue to go un-treated in many areas or, if treated, that it could not be pumped to those needing it; and that many, if not most, Palestinians would be in the dark......
UNRWA worries about more than the implications of no electricity. Supplying 80% of Gaza’s population with food aid, UN authorities warned that unless Karni crossing, designated for foodstuffs, re-opens after the week’s closure, they will have to halt food hand-outs in a matter of 48 hours....."
(Eva Bartlett is a Canadian human rights advocate and freelancer who spent eight months in 2007 living in West Bank communities and four months in Cairo and at the Rafah crossing. She is currently based in Gaza, after the third successful voyage of the Free Gaza movement to break the siege on Gaza)
Palestine Chronicle
"Gaza is host to a new power outage.
It came the evening of the day when a delegation of 11 European Members of Parliament had visited Gaza's only power plant, which supplies about 1/3 the electricity used in Gaza (the amount used, not the amount needed. People are making due with regular power cuts, particularly in the northern areas of the Strip).
The plant used to supply 50% of Gaza's needs before Israel bombed it in June 2006, destroying all 6 of the plant's large transformers. Since then, ten smaller, temporary transformers have had to function, inadequately, as permanent replacements. With the siege on Gaza, importing new transformers, or even replacements parts, has become impossible.....
Aware that I would have no power later to do any writing, I was acutely more aware that hospitals would be at the mercy of their expensive, diesel-powered generators; that water would continue to go un-treated in many areas or, if treated, that it could not be pumped to those needing it; and that many, if not most, Palestinians would be in the dark......
UNRWA worries about more than the implications of no electricity. Supplying 80% of Gaza’s population with food aid, UN authorities warned that unless Karni crossing, designated for foodstuffs, re-opens after the week’s closure, they will have to halt food hand-outs in a matter of 48 hours....."
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