Hamas militants prepare to fire rockets into Israel (NowTheEndBegins.com)
Into the seventh day of Israeli Operation Protective Edge, missiles are still flying in both directions. It’s a scary place to be, and on top of it, 70 thousand Gazans from Khan Younis and el-Balah are in the dark, unable to turn on televisions to drown out the sounds of war in their backyards.
Nighttime, June 13, 2014, Hamas accidently fires a rocket into a power line. D’oh!
D’oh!
Of course, young men are the ones fighting the battles, and young men can be reckless. When I was a kid, I shot out the neighbors window with a BB gun, and got whipped. You know these boys are in trouble—somebody’s getting a hand chopped off.
Because it is a declared battle zone right now, the Israel Electric Company (IEC) workers will are in no rush to fix the grid. Arutz Sheva news reports that Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has asked the IEC not to risk the lives of its employees to restore power to the affected sector in Gaza, an operation that could take hours.
It’s coincidental that many in the Israeli government have suggested that Israel cut off the power anyway.
Gaza is the one of the most populated slices of earth, with 1.8 million people (1 million of whom are UN registered refugees) on a seven by thirty-two mile strip of land. It is a huge concentration camp, and the people inside are sick of living that way.
Israel, controls the Gaza perimeters and all that goes in and out of the territory. They don’t charge for the bullets they fire in, or the gas that goes into the bulldozers that regularly knock down their homes, but they do charge for electricity.
The Palestinian Authority, really Hamas, currently owes the Israel Electric Company $525 million in unpaid bills. Although an examination of that debt by business daily Globes shows that the relative amount owed by Gaza was closer to $62 million.
Last month, the IEC filed a petition with the High Court because it wanted to shut off electricity to the Palestinian Authority until the debt was paid—or allow the IEC to seize customs and aid payments sent to the Palestinian Authority to pay off its debt. The working for the company store, debt-slave model.
The Israeli government said the IEC has to keep the power on for now. Electricity reaches Gaza via twelve high-tension wires capable of delivering up to 120 megawatts, which does not seem to be enough for all of Gaza. Residents report only getting electricity for twelve hours a day.
Gaza also generates some power from a 140 megawatt generator under control by the Palestine Electric Company, which is run by Hamas operatives—maybe it was one of them that shot the rocket. Competition can get ugly, especially when it’s hot outside, and this is summer in the dessert inside a concentration camp—I would rage, too.
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