Destroying the habitat of Gazans

Life in the dark. Photo Ma’an images

Gaza sees third day of protests over power crisis

By Ma’an
September 15, 2015

GAZA CITY — Dozens of Palestinians across the Gaza Strip on Monday held demonstrations for the third straight day to protest the coastal enclave’s ongoing power crisis.

In the southern city of Rafah, protesters called for the resignation of Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah’s government over the crisis.

Meanwhile, in central Gaza, residents of the Bureij and Nuseirat refugee camps set tires alight in a demonstration held in front of Gaza’s sole power station.
Hamas said that participants burned photos of President Mahmoud Abbas, before the movement’s police force dispersed the protest.

Local Fatah officials later “praised” the demonstration in posts on Facebook, but said they were “surprised” that pictures of Abbas and Hamdallah had been burnt.

The officials accused members of Hamas’ military branch, al-Qassam Brigades, for burning the photos, and said: “We stood up against them.”

The Gaza Strip has faced a power crisis for months, with insufficient fuel entering the enclave, which has been under a crippling Israeli blockade since 2007.

Gaza currently receives electricity from Israel, Egypt, and its sole power plant.

However, the power plant has struggled to cover the cost of fuel, with Gaza’s energy authority blaming taxes imposed by the Palestinian Authority’s petroleum authority.
An inability to cover these costs forced the power station to close for more than a month earlier this year, and it has not run at full capacity in years.

Gaza’s energy authority reiterated that it holds the Palestinian Authority and the Hamdallah’s government fully responsible for the current power crisis.

The energy authority said Monday that “Hamadallah’s government ignored urgent appeals to increase the power supply in Gaza, even though we paid the necessary costs.”
Last summer the plant was targeted during the 50-day Israeli offensive on Gaza, completely knocking it out of commission.

Gaza suffers up to 12 hours of power outages each day. Many individual homes have their own generators, and households try to purchase extremely expensive fuel that comes into Gaza for private consumption.

Earlier this month, the UN development agency warned that that the Gaza Strip, ravaged by wars and nearly a decade of Israel’s blockade, could become uninhabitable for residents within just five years.

“The social, health and security-related ramifications of the high population density and overcrowding are among the factors that may render Gaza unlivable by 2020,” the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) wrote in its annual report.

Young Palestinians scavenge in one of Gaza’s many garbage dumps to find anything they might recycle. Photo by Mahmud Hams/AFP/Getty Images

Gaza Ranks High on World’s Garbage Map

UN study finds 3 billion people lack access to controlled waste disposal facilities.

By Zafrir Rinat, Haaretz
September 16, 2015

EXTRACT
Three of the world’s 50 biggest active garbage dumps are in the Gaza Strip, an indication of the poor conditions in the territory. There is one site near Dir al-Balah, in the central Gaza Strip, and a second near Rafah, in the southern Strip near the Egyptian border. The biggest is near Gaza City, in the northern Strip, and 50 people support themselves by collecting and selling materials from it. Two other large sites are in Jordan, while the largest dump in the world is in Pakistan. It extends over 50 acres and around 5,000 people support themselves by collecting and selling waste materials.

That, according to a report issued last week by the UN Environment Programme, based on a study by the International Solid Waste Association. The authors of the study — the 2015 Global Waste Management Outlook — estimate that at least three billion people, nearly half the global population, lack access to controlled waste disposal facilities. As a result, the waste they produce is not recycled formally or used in energy recovery, and at the same time it creates widespread health and environmental hazards.

Links
Global Waste Management Outlook, UNEP and ISWA, 2015

Gaza Solid Waste Management Project, The World Bank, 2014

Gaza’s landfills threaten citizens’ health, Al Monitor, June 2015

Gaza’s emerging trash crisis, Electronic Intifadda, June 2009.