Monday, November 10, 2008

Powerless in Gaza, residents rely on the tunnels


By Amira Hass

"Since Sunday morning, Gaza City has gone back to readying for long blackouts. In the Tel el Hawa neighborhood in the southern part of the city, the electricity went out at 8 a.m. When children came home from school, the lights had still not come back on. When their parents returned from work, the electricity was still out.....

On Sunday morning, the power station shut down one unit out of three. On Sunday night, on the assumption that the power supply would not be renewed by midnight, the station was planning on shutting down the second unit, and the third this morning. If the crossings are not opened, and Israel does not renew the fuel supply, Gaza will feel it immediately.

People here do not depend on miracles. The Tel el Hawa grocery store ran out of candles shortly after people realized their refrigerator had stopped running. Even the big supermarket in the exclusive Rimal neighborhood had no candles by the end of the morning. In the afternoon, a package of Egyptian candles came through the tunnels. A shekel a candle, but an hour and a half later, by sunset, the price had quadrupled.....

The gap between supply and demand means that neighborhoods must wait their turn for electricity, with breaks of a few hours in between.

This is another opportunity to bless the existence of the tunnels. Egyptian diesel fuel costs NIS 2.50 a liter, while Israeli diesel costs NIS 4. Those who have generators at home can find diesel at the gas stations (which now have one Israeli pump and one Egyptian pump). "

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