Gaza residents in dark after EU power snub

Hundreds of thousands of Gaza residents were forced to make do without electricity tonight as the coastal strip’s power supply became the latest victim of feuding between Gaza’s Hamas rulers and their rivals from Fatah.

European donors stopped paying key electricity aid over the weekend, concerned that Hamas is siphoning off revenues.

As Fatah and Hamas traded charges of corruption, at least half of Gaza’s 1.4 million people were plunged into darkness.

Power outages are nothing new in Gaza, where electricity reserves have long been unreliable.

But as the outages stretched on for days this time, residents scrambled to improvise, following the irregular electricity supply from district to district to charge mobile phones and laptop computers.

Generators have become a precious commodity. Yesterday, the European Union stopped funding fuel for the power plant that produces electricity for at least 700,000 Gazans.

Today, it said the payments would not resume because it had information that Hamas was “diverting” electricity revenues.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said the electricity crisis took place “after Hamas took over the electric company and began collecting revenues from the population to fund its militia, which in turn drove the EU to withhold its aid for providing fuel.”

However, Egypt said tonight will continue to supply electricity to Gaza despite the EU cut of power subsidies.

“This is part of our commitment to provide all kinds of possible support to the Palestinians,” Foreign Ministry Hosam Zaki said in a statement.

Egypt is believed to provide 17 megawatts of the total 200 megawatts that Gaza needs.