Gaza reduced to two hours’ electricity a day

ISRAEL yesterday began reducing electricity supplies to the Gaza Strip, despite warnings that the move could increase suffering and tensions in the Palestinian enclave.

The cut will reduce the mains power flow to Gaza to as little as two hours a day, though many businesses and the wealthy have their own generators.

The decision came after the Palestinian Authority (PA), which is based in the occupied West Bank, told Israel that it would no longer pay for electricity supplies to Gaza.

It raises concerns of rising tensions and a collapse of vital services in an impoverished and overcrowded territory that has been devastated by three wars with Israel since 2008.

Hamas has run Gaza since 2007, when it seized the strip in a near civil war from the Fatah party of Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas. Multiple attempts at reconciliation between Hamas and Fatah have failed, but the PA had continued to pay Israel for some electricity delivered to Gaza.

Israel “began to reduce electricity flow by eight megawatts” into the enclave, Gaza’s energy authority said.

The Gaza Strip is home to two million people, more than three quarters of whom the United Nations says depend on humanitarian aid.