From the darkness of Gaza, Saleh Al-Naami monitors the dynamics of the ugly inter-Palestinian conflict Adnan Abu Ras, 34, owns a small grocery shop in the Al-Rimal quarter of Gaza City. On Monday, he had to cancel further purchases of ice cream from Gaza's central distributor, since a couple of days earlier all the ice cream he had in his shop had melted and spoiled because of power cuts in Gaza. He did not want to compound his losses. All the other grocers in the city met the same predicament. They, too, had to stop stocking not only ice cream, but also every other type of food requiring refrigeration. In recent days, nearly round-the-clock power cuts have turned people's lives in Gaza into a nightmare after the European Union cut off funding for fuel shipments a week ago before it decided to reverse this decision yesterday morning. Since electricity powers so many vital services, the availability of frozen foods is probably the least of their problems. Take healthcare. Mohamed Zarif, who suffered a heart attack 10 days ago, was one of the fortunate ones. Imagine the relief of his five children when the doctor informed them a couple of days ago that their father would be released from intensive care in the Dar Al-Shifa Hospital the following day, now that he was no longer in a critical condition. Not only was their father out of danger, but he was also spared the peril of lengthy surgery at a time of severe shortages in the fuel needed to power the hospital's generators. Meanwhile, that shortage has aggravated the anxiety of the family of Mohamed Bin Ouda, who is being treated in the same hospital for pneumonia. The nearly 60-year-old patient's life hangs on the thread of the continued functioning of the pulmonary unit's breathing apparatus. There is virtual unanimity in Gaza that the government of Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad is responsible for this state of affairs, no matter how much that government attempts to put the blame on Hamas. Even the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP), a close ally of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and a vehement critic of Hamas's bid to resolve its rivalry with the ruling Fatah movement militarily, has had little choice but to agree that the Fayyad government has persuaded the European Union to cease its funding for the fuel needed to operate Gaza's power station in order to turn the people of Gaza against Hamas. Not long after statements by Fayyad's minister of information to the effect that Hamas planned to levy a tax on Palestinians' electricity consumption in order to fund its operations, the EU took the bait. EU Commission spokeswoman Antonia Mochan announced that in the light of information that Hamas intended to tax electricity consumption in Gaza, the EU stopped paying for the fuel that helps produce the electricity. "We are ready to resume payment of these fuel deliveries within hours once we have assurances these taxes will not be introduced," she said. The Hamas government, led by Ismail Haniyeh, has adamantly denied that it had any intention of levying such a tax. According to Ahmed Youssef, political spokesman for Haniyeh, rumours of an electricity tax and of using revenues from this to fund Hamas have no basis in fact. "Rather, they are part of the intensification of the siege of Gaza, which aims to turn Palestinian public opinion against Hamas," Youssef said. The conflicting reports issuing from the Fayyad government, and the subsequent exposure of the falsity of these reports, leave little doubt that this is the case. Last week, a Fayyad government spokesperson claimed that the Israeli army had informed his government that it would not permit the shipment of fuel oil across the border into Gaza. On Sunday, the Israeli Southern Command's civil liaison bureau announced that the Fayyad government had omitted the fuel oil used to operate the Gaza power station from its requests for fuel, but that the moment that it asked for the fuel deliveries to resume the Israeli army would lift the barriers to let them through. It was only then that the Fayyad government, reeling from the shock of this embarrassing revelation, attempted to cast the blame for the halt in fuel oil deliveries on Hamas, on the grounds of Hamas's alleged plan to tax electricity consumption. As though to aggravate the embarrassment of Abbas and his advisors, Israeli Channel 2 political commentator Amnon Abramovich, regarded as one of the most reliable Israeli journalists, revealed portions of the minutes of the last meeting between Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert in Jericho. At the meeting, the Israeli prime minister had cautioned the Palestinian president that, "you must realise that if you sit and talk with Hamas again we won't be able to continue working with you." According to Abramovich, Abbas was desperate to reassure Olmert of his commitment to remaining tough on Hamas. He listed the actions he had already taken, such as banning the organisation's activities, rounding up and detaining activists, and closing down its offices in the West Bank. He also insisted that he was doing everything possible to incite Palestinian opinion in Gaza against Hamas, one measure towards which would be to cut off the electricity in that sector. Further corroboration of this intent is to be found on several Palestinian Internet news sites, which quote Saadi Al-Karnaz, secretary-general of the Fayyad cabinet, as saying that the electricity in Gaza would be cut off in order to drive Palestinians there to rebel against Hamas. The Abbas/Fayyad camp must be growing desperate indeed if it feels it must resort to such a form of collective punishment in order to vent its frustration at Hamas's ability to secure and consolidate its hold over Gaza.
