Vol. 81/No. 5 February 6, 2017
Thousands march in Gaza vs. Hamas cuts in electricity
The largest action was Jan. 12 when some 10,000 Palestinians in Jabaliya, the largest of eight refugee camps in Gaza, took to the streets.
In a rare sign of public protest in Gaza, which is tightly controlled by the Islamist group Hamas, they marched to the offices of the electricity company. Protesters chanted, “Raise your voice, electricity cuts mean death,” “Oh, Haniya and Abbas, we are being trampled!” and “The people want the fall of the regime.”
The chants were aimed at Ismail Haniya, leader of Hamas, and Mahmoud Abbas, head of the rival Fatah party and the president of the Palestinian Authority ruling in the West Bank.
Hamas security forces fired live ammunition in the air to disperse the crowd, hit participants with batons and arrested some of the protesters.
Nearly 2 million Palestinians live in Gaza, one of the most densely populated areas in the world. To keep electric power running round the clock would require 450 to 500 megawatts a day, but the territory receives less than half of that.
Israel supplies 120 megawatts, Egypt supplies 30 megawatts and Gaza’s only power plant, which runs on diesel fuel and was bombed by the Israeli army in 2006 and 2014 and never rebuilt to full capacity, generates 60 megawatts.
The cause of the latest shortages is not entirely clear, but Hamas and the Palestinian Authority blamed each other. Hamas buys diesel from the Palestinian Authority, which taxes the fuel.
Capitalist and middle class families living in wealthy neighborhoods have solar panels, Al-Monitor newspaper reported last year. But the panels, rechargeable batteries and transformers that can cost $1,000 to be able to light a house for eight hours, are beyond the reach of the vast majority.
By Jan. 16 the government of Qatar had come to the rescue of Hamas, sending $12 million to pay for diesel fuel. The Turkish government also promised aid.
The Israeli government pulled its citizens and military out of Gaza in 2005, turning control over to the Palestinian Authority. The next year Hamas defeated Fatah in elections and then pushed its rivals out in bloody street clashes in 2007.
The people of Gaza have paid a high price for Hamas’ reactionary, anti-working-class program, its calls for the destruction of Israel and its promotion of Jew-hatred, which has brought three wars with Israel in the past 10 years. In the 2014 war Tel Aviv retaliated for missiles Hamas fired into Israel. The Israeli attacks killed more than 2,100, injured some 11,000 and destroyed factories. The casualties were so high because Hamas’ strategy was to place its weapons in working-class neighborhoods, as well as schools and hospitals.
The Israeli government tightly controls the entry of everything from concrete to medical supplies into the territory, exacerbating shortages. Some 95 percent of water in Gaza isn’t fit to drink, the unemployment rate is over 40 percent, and hospitals face dire shortages of medicines, equipment and supplies.
Every few weeks Salah Haj Yahya and a few other Israeli Arab doctors from Physicians for Human Rights take a mobile clinic to Gaza.
“They [Hamas] can bring out hundreds of thousands of people. But there are many angry people who are very frustrated with Hamas,” Haj Yahya told the Israeli daily Haaretz Jan 7. “Many people tell me they dream of returning to Israel to work, as they once did. They feel that no one cares about them, not the Israelis, not the Egyptians, and not the Palestinian Authority.”
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