[News] Israel using electricity to blackmail Gaza
Anti-Imperialist News
news at freedomarchives.org
Wed Jan 10 11:10:37 EST 2018
https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/israel-using-electricity-blackmail-gaza
Israel using electricity to blackmail Gaza
Ali Abunimah <https://electronicintifada.net/people/ali-abunimah> - 9
January 2018
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Israel has restored supplies of electricity it sells to the Gaza Strip
which it cut in June, exacerbating a humanitarian crisis.
But it is openly blackmailing residents of the besieged territory, which
still receives far less electricity than it needs, including to run
life-saving medical services
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/charlotte-silver/power-cuts-put-lives-gaza-kidney-patients-danger>
and sanitation
<https://electronicintifada.net/content/life-septic-tank/20826>.
Israel says Gaza won’t get more power without progress on the release of
Israelis detained in Gaza – a use of basic humanitarian needs as
bargaining chips in gross violation of international law.
On Monday, Israel began supplying 120 megawatts to Gaza, which means
that Gaza’s two million residents may now receive up to six hours of
electricity per day, followed by an outage of 12 hours.
This came after the Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority led by Mahmoud
Abbas asked Israel to restore the supply
<http://english.wafa.ps/page.aspx?id=VNgm4ea95898632280aVNgm4e> amid a
faltering reconciliation deal
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/omar-karmi/old-headaches-new-reconciliation-deal>
with rival Hamas, which has ruled in Gaza over the last decade.
Five of The Electronic Intifada’s contributors in different parts of
Gaza said they had noticed slight to modest improvements in the
situation since Monday.
Rami Almeghari <https://electronicintifada.net/people/rami-almeghari>,
who lives in central Gaza’s Maghazi refugee camp, said that the
connection time had risen to six to eight hours, compared with two to
four previously.
Hamza Abu Eltarabesh
<https://electronicintifada.net/people/hamza-abu-eltarabesh>, who lives
in western Gaza City, observed, “The change is very slight. In fact we
didn’t feel it.”
Punitive cuts
Any increase marks an improvement only by the dire standards of Gaza.
“Even under ‘ordinary’ conditions, for years the amount of electricity
available to Gaza residents has only met about half of actual demand,”
according to Gisha <http://gisha.org/updates/8480>, an Israeli human
rights group that monitors the siege of Gaza.
Gisha notes that Gaza’s sole power plant relies on fuel purchased from
either Israel or Egypt and that additional electricity supplied over
lines from Egypt “has been sporadic due to unstable security conditions
in the region.”
That “ordinary” situation got considerably worse last year, after Abbas
and Israel implemented a series of punitive measures aimed at forcing
Hamas to give up power in Gaza.
In mid-April Gaza’s power plant stopped functioning
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/charlotte-silver/power-crisis-hits-gaza-hospitals-israel-tightens-siege-sick>
after emergency fuel supplies funded by Turkey and Qatar ran out and a
dispute over charges between the PA and Hamas meant that no more fuel
was being purchased.
Within weeks, the Red Cross warned
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/gaza-brink-systemic-collapse-icrc-warns>
that Gaza’s health system was on the brink of “systemic collapse.”
In June, Israel tightened the noose by sharply cutting the electricity
it supplies to Gaza at the request of Abbas’ authority
<http://www.gedco.ps/posts/details/5242> from 120 megawatts to just 70.
Health “catastrophe”
By July, Gaza’s electricity supply plunged to an all-time low
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/charlotte-silver/gazas-electricity-supply-hits-all-time-low>
– just 90 megawatts of the estimated 400-500 it needs daily – and a
month later hospitals were warning
<https://electronicintifada.net/content/video-gaza-hospitals-warn-catastrophe/21546>
of “catastrophe.”
Hospitals postponed surgeries
<https://electronicintifada.net/content/surgeries-cut-one-third-gazas-main-hospital/20601>
because they could not keep the power on long enough to run life support
equipment.
Rights groups said that even if the cuts had been requested by the PA,
Israel, as the occupying power, could not wash its hands of the situation.
“Israel controls the borders, the airspace, the waters of Gaza, so
Israel has an obligation that goes beyond merely responding to a request
from Palestinian authorities,” Human Rights Watch’s Omar Shakir stated
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/charlotte-silver/israel-implements-illegal-cuts-gazas-power-supply>.
Sixteen human rights organizations wrote to Israel’s attorney general
denouncing the cuts <http://gisha.org/press/7830> as a clear violation
of international humanitarian law.
Blackmail
Given the silence and complicity of the so-called international
community
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/eu-washes-its-hands-gaza>
when Israel implemented the cuts in June, it is no surprise now that
Israel – assured of impunity – continues to violate its legal
responsibilities.
COGAT <https://electronicintifada.net/tags/cogat> – the bureaucratic
enforcement arm of Israel’s military occupation, which tries to brand
itself
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/maureen-clare-murphy/heartwarming-or-heartless-israeli-propaganda-vs-reality>
as a “humanitarian” body – is attempting to blackmail the civilian
population in Gaza over further electricity supplies.
In a statement
<http://www.cogat.mod.gov.il/en/Our_Activities/Pages/Electric-supply-to-Gaza-8.1.17.aspx>
Monday, COGAT said Israel had agreed to restore the 120 megawatts it was
supplying before June, which the PA would have to pay for, but that
“humanitarian issues are not one sided.”
COGAT said that Israel would not consider selling an additional 100
megawatts “before humanitarian issues such as the return of the bodies
of Hadar Goldin and Oron Shaul and the return of additional Israeli
citizens held in Gaza are discussed.”
Israel’s attempt to use electricity as a negotiating chip for Israelis
detained in Gaza
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/maureen-clare-murphy/israel-uses-fighters-trapped-gaza-tunnel-bargaining-chips>
is a blatant violation of its legal obligations as an occupying power
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/un-blames-palestinians-electricity-crisis-israel-caused-gaza>.
The Fourth Geneva Convention requires
<https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/ihl/385ec082b509e76c41256739003e636d/6756482d86146898c125641e004aa3c5>
Israel to use “the fullest extent of the means available to it” to
ensure supplies of food and medical services, and to maintain public
health and hygiene in the occupied territory. These are services for
which an adequate supply of electricity is absolutely essential.
Such blackmail could violate the Fourth Geneva Convention’s prohibition
on collective punishment
<https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/ihl/WebART/380-600038> and the
prohibition in international law on siege warfare
<https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/customary-ihl/eng/docs/v1_rul_rule53>
against a civilian population.
The International Committee of the Red Cross already stated in 2010
<https://www.icrc.org/eng/resources/documents/update/palestine-update-140610.htm>
that Israel’s blockade of Gaza that began a decade ago “constitutes a
collective punishment imposed in clear violation of Israel’s obligations
under international humanitarian law” and that the “whole of Gaza’s
civilian population is being punished for acts for which they bear no
responsibility.”
Sheer hypocrisy
The family of Hadar Goldin
<https://electronicintifada.net/tags/hadar-goldin>, an Israeli
occupation soldier who went missing during Israel’s 2014 invasion of
Gaza, slammed the Israeli government
<https://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-5067645,00.html> for
increasing the electricity supply to Gaza at all. The family remains
determined that two million people – half of them children – should be
made to suffer until they learn news of their son’s fate.
Following Goldin’s disappearance, the Israeli army went on a three-day
killing spree
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/adri-nieuwhof/israel-used-disappearance-soldier-pretext-killing-spree-rights-group>
in Gaza that left 225 Palestinians dead and thousands of homes damaged
or destroyed.
COGAT even supplied a quote
<http://www.cogat.mod.gov.il/en/Our_Activities/Pages/Electric-supply-to-Gaza-8.1.17.aspx>
from Leah Goldin, the missing soldier’s mother, stating that “every
mother wants to visit her son’s grave and the inability to return Hadar
Goldin for his burial is considered a crime in Islam.”
Neither she nor Israeli occupation officials at COGAT noted the irony –
not to say the sheer hypocrisy of such a statement – given that Israel
systematically withholds the bodies of Palestinians killed by its
forces, often in suspected extrajudicial executions
<https://www.adalah.org/en/content/view/8765>, a policy that human
rights defenders denounce as a “severe violation of international law.”
Israel has withheld some bodies for decades
<https://electronicintifada.net/content/mother-waits-36-years-israel-return-sons-body/14969>,
burying them in its so-called “cemetery of numbers” where families
cannot visit to mourn their loved ones.
In November, Israel seized the bodies of five fighters from the
resistance group Islamic Jihad killed in the detonation of a tunnel
along the Gaza-Israel boundary.
According to human rights defenders, Israel is illegally using the
bodies as bargaining chips
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/maureen-clare-murphy/israel-uses-fighters-trapped-gaza-tunnel-bargaining-chips>.
While Palestinians in Gaza will welcome any easing of the electricity
siege, the situation remains dire despite Monday’s increase in supply.
As 2018 started, the World Health Organization said
<https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2018/jan/03/gaza-health-system-collapse-electricity-crisis-threatens-total-blackout>
that Gaza’s health system remained “on the edge of collapse.”
--
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