Summary
Author of “People’s Light in Gaza’s Darkness” in Light in Gaza (2022), on Gaza’s fifteen-year electricity crisis as a political condition rather than a development failure (Light in Gaza: Writings Born of Fire, PDF p.133-146).
Details
- Gaza’s power availability averaged seven hours a day in 2017–18 and twelve to thirteen hours in 2019-2021, falling to four hours during assaults such as May 2021, with two-thirds of power controlled by Israel and the sole plant destroyed in 2006 and 2014 (Light in Gaza: Writings Born of Fire, PDF p.133).
- Through the Shuja’iyya handyman Abu Tariq and his family, the chapter presents electricity as purely political: candle fires killed three children each in Deir al-Balah in 2012, Shati camp in 2016 and Nuseirat camp in 2020, and children greet restored power with the cry “The electricity is coming” (Light in Gaza: Writings Born of Fire, PDF p.140, p.144).