Emergency Alert: 13th Nov - Deliver Gaza Mothers message to Palestinian Mission, London - PA release Gaza fuel!

Inminds.com & Wafa A Al-Udaini
11 November 2013

We will be holding a vigil and delivering a message from a mother in Gaza to the Palestinian Mission in London at 11am on Wednesday 13th November 2013.

Date: 11am-12 noon Wed 13th Nov 2013
Location: Palestinian Mission, 5 Galena Rd, London W6 0LT
Closest Tube: Ravenscourt Park ( District Line )

Facebook Event Page: https://www.facebook.com/events/1436084036603122

The Gaza Electricity Crisis - and our role as activists

I am Um Ali, Hanyya Ibrahim a mother from Gaza. Me and my 4 children have lived through the enemy's bombing, occupation and siege and we have survived. They will never break our spirit and we will continue to struggle until we achieve our freedom or die trying.

The latest crime against my family is the cutting off of electricity. A couple of days ago we only had 6 hours of electricity followed by 18 hours of darkness. And we fear that the coming days will 4 hours of electricity or less, and I don't know what tomorrow holds for us. six hours is not enough to wash clothes or cook or even clean the house or teach my children or pack . Everything requires electricity, from operating the pumps that draws our drinking water from the wells, to operating our sewage treatment facility - now our relatives Sewage-collection pools are overflowing on to the streets and maybe we are the next. I fear for our patients in hospitals without electricity.

We depend on the candles to illuminate the house although I know how it is dangerous but my children fear the blackout and there is no fuel or gas to power a generator. We have to work all the 6 hours [when there is electricity] whether day or night. it is so exhausting yet we can't finish everything..

A message from a Mother in Gaza..

Israel is ultimately responsible

As the occupying power, Israel is directly responsible under international law to ensure Gaza's humanitarian needs including electricity are met. Yet Israel has never fulfilled its legal obligations and has as part of its deliberate policy of slow genocide cut the amount of electricity is sells to Gaza so today it only provides 120MW of electricity whilst Gaza requires 420MW to survive in winter. So the blame for the current crisis in Gaza must squarely fall on Israel.

Sources of electricity

In order to supplement the short fall in electricity Gazaans have looked to two other sources of electricity - Egypt and their own power plant. Gaza buys 28MW of electricity from Egypt and its own power plant if it was allowed to function at 100% it can produce a maximum 132MW of electricity. Even then Gazaans cannot meet their requirement, 120 + 28 + 132 = 280MW which is 140MW short of what they require in winter. This is why there is always power blackouts in Gaza.

The Gaza Power Plant

But what makes the situation worse is that Israel doesn't allow the Gaza power plant to operate at 100%. In June 2006 Israel bombed the power plant, specifically targeting its six transformers, when two of the missiles missed their target Israel fired two more missiles to ensure all the transformers were destroyed. With the heavy restrictions on what Israel allows in to Gaza its been a slow process of repair to get the power plant working again, and before the current fuel crisis the Gaza power plant was producing just a fraction of its capacity - between 40-65MW of electricity. And even that meagre amount has come to an end since the coup in Egypt with the coup regime destroying on a mass scale the tunnels from Egypt to Gaza which had survived previous Egyptian attempts to destroy them

The power plant needs 650,000 litres fuel per day to operate fully. The fuel entered Gaza through three routes - the tunnels, the Kerem Shalom cross point, and from the PA via Israel. As the agreement between Israel and Egypt does not allow any commerce to use the Rafah crossing, all supplies in to Gaza from Egypt including fuel has to be smuggled via the tunnels. The exception to this was Qatari fuel (300,000 litres / day) which through special agreement with Israel comes in via the Kerem Shalom cross point which Israel directly controls (on the border between Egypt, Gaza and Israel).

The role of the Ramallah Palestinian Authority (PA)

The European Union, rather than hold Israel accountable and sanction it for not fulfilling its legal responsibilities to Gaza as the occupying power, it has decided instead to help alleviate Israel's financial burden of occupation by chipping in to pay for some of the fuel costs for the Gaza power plant. The EU provides 300,000 litres of fuel per day for Gaza, this amount used to be directly transferred to Gaza but after the intervention of Ramallah Palestinian Authority politician Salam Fayyad the money is now transferred to the PA treasury. Having pocketed the money the Ramallah PA has stopped transferring the fuel to Gaza. Instead it want to sell the fuel, which has already been paid for, to Gaza. To make matters worse it wants to sell it at an extortionate rate. Whilst the international price for fuel is 2.8 NIS (which is what the PA pays Israel), the PA want to charge Gaza a ridiculous 5.7 NIS! No government in the world , let allow a small enclave under a genocidal siege can afford to pay such an amount. It was at this point that Gaza switched from PA/Israeli fuel to Qatari fuel.

But now with the coup regime in Egypt blocking all supplies to Gaza (including around 10 million litres of Qatari fuel blocked in Egypt) the Gaza power plant is left with no fuel. And after 3 months of no supply its fuel reserves have dried up and the power station had to shut down. Gaza has been in darkness without its power plant for nearly two weeks now.

..Whilst our suffering is a direct result of our enemy's siege of Gaza, I am angered that your PA in Ramallah is colluding with the enemy in our suffering. How dare you monetize our suffering in to profits for yourself? Our electricity power plant has run out of fuel so it cannot produce electricity. You are charging my people for the 300,000 liters of fuel per day that the European Commission has provided for the Gaza power plant - fuel that has already been paid for, and you are selling it to us at an extortionate 5.7 NIS per litre whilst the international price is 2.8 NIS! Those people that profit from the suffering of their own people are the most wretched on the face of the earth. In our darkness we will remember your role in our suffering and we will not forget. If there is any decency left then release our fuel..

A message from a Mother in Gaza..

Action

Whilst we hold Israel responsible for the crisis, and secondly we hold the coup regime in Egypt fully culpable in this tragedy, as activists we have to be pragmatic as to where our meagre efforts will likely yield results for Gaza to help alleviate the immediate crisis. With this in mind we are going to pressure the PA in the hope that they will, if not out of duty then out of shame, release the fuel that the EU has provided for Gaza. Our understanding is that Gaza is even prepared to pay for the fuel at the fair international rate, even though the fuel has already been paid for.

To this end we will be delivering a letter from a mother in Gaza (see below) to the Palestinian Mission in London and holding a vigil outside. Full details are given below, please join us or organise your own event in your own country - it's something practical we can do for Gaza.

We want to reiterate that we understand that this is not the solution to the problem but just a band aid to help with the immediate crisis, any real solution requires Israel to be brought to book for its illegal occupation and its responsibilities under international law which include providing the whole of Gaza with electricity.

Authors: Inminds.com and Wafa A Al-Udaini, with special thanks to Ahmed Abu Al Amreen, Head of Energy Information Center in Palestinian Energy & Natural Resources Authority for his patience in explaining the facts to us.

Gaza Mothers Message To Ramallah PA

In the name of God the Merciful

Gentlemen in the Palestinian embassy,

Peace be upon you and God's mercy

The latest crime against my family is the cutting off of electricity. A couple of days ago we only had 6 hours of electricity followed by 18 hours of darkness. And we fear that the coming days will 4 hours of electricity or less, and I don't know what tomorrow holds for us. Six hours is not enough to wash clothes or cook or even clean the house or teach my children or pack. Everything requires electricity, from operating the pumps that draws our drinking water from the wells, to operating our sewage treatment facility - now our relatives Sewage-collection pools are overflowing on to the streets and maybe we are next. I fear for our our patients in hospitals without electricity.

We depend on the candles to illuminate the house although I know how it is dangerous but my children fear the blackout and there is no fuel or gas to power a generator. We have to work all the 6 hours [when there is electricity] whether day or night. it is so exhausting yet we can't finish everything.

Whilst our suffering is a direct result of our enemy's siege of Gaza, I am angered that your PA in Ramallah is colluding with the enemy in our suffering. How dare you monetize our suffering in to profits for yourself? Our electricity power plant has run out of fuel so it cannot produce electricity. You are charging my people for the 300,000 liters of fuel per day that the European Commission has provided for the Gaza power plant - fuel that has already been paid for, and you are selling it to us at an extortionate 5.7 NIS per litre whilst the international price is 2.8 NIS! Those people that profit from the suffering of their own people are the most wretched on the face of the earth. In our darkness we will remember your role in our suffering and we will not forget. If there is any decency left then release our fuel.

In conclusion,
Yours respectfully

Hanyya Ibrahim