Israel will reduce electricity supplies to the Gaza Strip after the Palestinian Authority limited how much it pays for power to the enclave run by Hamas, Israeli officials said yesterday.
The decision by Israel’s security cabinet is expected to shorten by 45 minutes the daily average of four hours of power that Gaza’s 2mn residents receive from an electricity grid dependent on Israeli supplies, the officials said.
Any worsening to Gaza’s power crisis — its main electrical plant is off-line in a dispute over taxation — could cause the collapse of health services already reliant on stand-alone generators, many of them in a poor state of repair, Ashraf al-Qidra, spokesman for the Health Ministry in Gaza, said. Israel charges the PA 40mn shekels ($11mn) a month for electricity, deducting that from the transfers of Palestinian tax revenues it collects on behalf of the Authority. Israel does not engage with Hamas.
Last month, the Palestinian Authority informed Israel that it would cover only 70% of the monthly cost of electricity that the Israel Electric Corp supplies to the Gaza Strip.
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