Lights Out In Gaza

Hundreds of thousands of Gaza residents were forced to make do without electricity Monday as the coastal strip's power supply became the latest victim of feuding between Gaza's Hamas rulers and their rivals from Fatah.

European donors stopped paying key electricity aid over the weekend, concerned that Hamas is siphoning off revenues. As Fatah and Hamas traded charges of corruption, at least half of Gaza's 1.4 million people were plunged into darkness.

Also Monday, an Israeli air strike killed six Hamas militants in central Gaza, according to Hamas and Palestinian medical officials. The Israeli army said its aircraft targeted a car carrying gunmen who fired rockets into Israel earlier in the day.

Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri threatened to retaliate for the air strike, which he said "came in harmony with the conspiracy of the Ramallah government to tighten the siege on our people, including cutting off electricity and arresting our holy warriors in the West Bank."

Power outages are nothing new in Gaza, where electricity reserves have long been unreliable. But as the outages stretched on for days this time, residents scrambled to improvise, following the irregular electricity supply from neighborhood to neighborhood to charge mobile phones and laptop computers.

Generators have become a precious commodity.

Tamer al-Bagga, manager of a beachside cafe, said his two generators have brought him business, drawing customers eager to watch TV, eat hot meals and escape the heat of their homes.

"No one is sharing their generators," he said. "They are more expensive now and fuel is scarce. It's every man for himself." The price of generators has gone up 70 percent since he bought his last year, al-Bagga said.

On Sunday, the European Union stopped funding fuel for the power plant that produces electricity for at least 700,000 Gazans. On Monday, it said the payments wouldn't resume because it had information that Hamas was "diverting" electricity revenues.

"We are ready to resume our support to the Gaza power plant within hours once we receive the appropriate assurances that all the funds will be exclusively used for the benefit of the Gaza population," the European Commission — the EU's executive branch — said in a statement.

Hamas has controlled Gaza since it vanquished Fatah's forces in fierce fighting in June. The Fatah-led government that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas set up in the West Bank accused Hamas of taking electricity revenues.

"Hamas is collecting all the electricity fees and never pays the costs of the electricity," said Jawwad Hirzallah, deputy minister of economy. "The Europeans were paying $10 million that Hamas collects from the people and doesn't pay the costs. So the European Union found itself paying the electricity company, while Hamas was pocketing the revenues."

But the Islamic militant group — which last month arrested the electric company's Fatah-affiliated director on corruption charges — has denied taking the utility's money, and accused the Fatah leadership in Ramallah of using the electricity crisis to discredit Hamas' Gaza government.

"The government in Gaza is not involved in the operations of the (electric) company," said Hamas adviser Ala Araj. Hamas will release details of its investigation of the electric company's former director in the next few days, proving he was stealing EU money, Araj said.

In recent weeks, Hamas has been going door to door in Gaza ordering residents to pay long overdue electricity bills. While Hamas denies that it controls the electricity company, Fatah insists it does, citing the director's arrest as evidence.

Jehad Hamad, a political analyst based in Gaza, said electricity is one of many battlegrounds the two sides are using to try to gain the upper hand.

The Ramallah government, Hamad added, might be worried that Hamas has proof that Fatah officials skimmed off money from the electrical company in the past.

"Electricity is a 'hot-button' issue," he said.

Gaza's latest electricity woes began last week, when Israel closed a fuel crossing into the coastal territory because of security concerns, leading to power shortages. Israel reopened the passage Sunday, but the plant's Israeli fuel supplier didn't deliver fuel after the European Union said it would not foot the bill.

Although private generators and sporadic supplies from the Israeli and Egyptian companies that power the rest of the strip have eased the blackout, affected neighborhoods and cities have had only a few hours of electricity a day.