For nearly a month, residents of the Gaza Strip have had electricity for only a few hours a day, a situation that threatens a serious humanitarian crisis. The reason? The Palestinian Authority (PA), based in the West Bank, normally supplies Gaza with fuel for its power plant, but cut off the supply because the Strip’s rulers won’t pay up. Evelyn Gordon ask how peace is possible when Palestinian leaders are so contemptuous of their own people’s welfare:
Hamas isn’t willing to pay the hefty tax the Palestinian Authority imposes, while the PA isn’t willing to lower the tax. . . . [T]he only reason Gaza has enough power for even a few hours a day is that Israel has begun quietly picking up the tab for its other main power source, the electricity brought in on high-voltage wires from Israel. Until recently, the PA paid for that electricity, but last month, it announced it would no longer do so—and Hamas, needless to say, refuses to pick up the slack.
What about the West Bank? It is still getting uninterrupted power only because Israel agreed last year to forgive $130 million of the massive $530-million debt that Palestinian power companies there owe the Israel Electric Corporation. In other words, just like in Gaza, the Israeli taxpayer got stuck with the bill, because Israel cares more about Palestinians’ electricity needs than does either the PA or Hamas.
If all this were happening because both governments were simply broke, it would be understandable. But, in fact, both seem to have plenty of money for their top priority: incentivizing or directly funding anti-Israel terror. The PA, for instance, spent $129 million last year paying above-market salaries to convicted terrorists sitting in Israeli jails. . . . As for Hamas, it taxes every single item that enters Gaza, giving it revenue of hundreds of millions of dollars a year. The last annual budget it published, for 2014, came to $530 million. But of this, it spends an estimated $100 million a year on building its capacity to attack Israel. . . .
If any Palestinian government ever prioritizes its own people’s welfare over anti-Israel terror, it might be possible to talk about peace. But as long as killing Israelis is the top priority for both Hamas and Fatah, the idea that either Palestinian party would ever sign a peace agreement with Israel is fatuous.
Read more on Evelyn Gordon: http://evelyncgordon.com/there-wont-be-peace-while-the-power-is-out/