“Whenever there is a blackout, I’m in Allah’s hands,” Wasfi says. “The machine just stops, blood stops circulating, I just cry. Then we have to wait until the generator starts.”
Over the last two months, blackouts have increased so much in Gaza that Wasfi and the 200 other kidney dialysis patients frequenting Al Shifa Hospital three times a week for four-hour rounds of treatment have been witnessing their screens going blank almost every time.
The frequent blackouts have rendered many of the hospital’s emergency battery backups useless,
“Many of our battery backups need repairing, and getting spare parts is a big problem; we’ve been waiting for a year for some of the items,” says Dr Mohammed Shatat, the director of the kidney dialysis department, who besides the nightmare of stocking medical supplies for his patients under the Israeli blockade has to think of coping with the daily blackouts. At the same hospital, his colleagues at the cardiac and surgery departments work with the same trepidation of facing a blackout during critical moments of their work.
The steep increase in blackouts since the EU stopped funding fuel for the Gaza Power Plant has plunged the entire coastal strip in total darkness for up to 12 hours a day, disrupting the daily lives of Palestinians beyond the hardships imposed by the Israeli blockade.
While most of the shops and offices in Gaza were already equipped with generators, many Palestinians are now buying portable generators imported through the tunnels for their homes, fuelled by cheap diesel coming through the same underground lifelines.
The owner of a store selling generators in Gaza City says sales have increased by 70% in the last month. With 1Kw machines selling at around NIS470 (92 Euros), one can generate enough energy with one litre of fuel to switch on the lights, a television set and recharge the mobile for three hours.
Abu Sami is looking at the different brands available, all made in China, before making his investment.
“Electricity is a big problem right now and I’m fed up of living in darkness,” he says. “My children have to study at home, they would like to play with the computer or watch TV, yet most of our evenings are spent with candles and gas lamps. Now that even gas is scarce, I’ve decided to buy a generator.”
The shop owner employs no marketing trickery to lure customers: He speaks openly about the inferior quality of the Chinese products. The model Abu Sami is eyeing does not give enough power to switch on the fridge, heaters or washing machine, but at least the nights can have the semblance of normality if one ignores the roaring sounds coming out of the generator.
This cheap energy alternative is not without its downsides. A repair shop nearby which has just been converted from a grocery store a month ago is full of faulty generators, most of them less than a month old, while others arrive damaged from the tunnels.
“I switched on mine twice since I bought it,” says Abu Raed, a taxi driver who just brought his generator to be repaired. “They’re too cheap and frail to keep up with all the blackouts we’re getting.”
For others living in poverty, generators are still too expensive to buy.
“In one month I make about NIS100 and have 18 family members to sustain, how can I afford a NIS470 generator besides the fuel and maintenance?” says 26-year-old Ibrahim, a bachelor still living with his family and the only one to have a job. “We have to make do with a kerosene lamp. With no gas available, we cook on firewood in the back yard and huddle in one room whenever it’s cold.”
The generator at a rundown computer games cafe proves irresistible for young boys without generators at home.
“I always come here to play when there is a power cut and I can do nothing at home,” says Mu’min Al Sinn, 15. “In the last three weeks, I have been coming every day.”
It is not just the poor who cannot afford generators. Jaad has a tyre repair garage but he is forced to stop working every time there is a blackout, as the machinery to inflate and repair flat tyres requires too much energy, requiring expensive generators and consuming big amounts of fuel.
“This has been the worst month of work, not counting the war a year ago,” he says about the daily blackouts forcing him to just stand still among the piling tyres at his garage.
A doorstep away, a blacksmith is busy getting a welding job done in the brief interval when electricity is available.
“I would need a very powerful generator to be able to use my machinery, costing me over NIS5,000,” says Abd al Rahman Al Shurafa, for whom idle time is costing him up to 50% of his monthly income.
Keeping his fish fresh is Ihab Abu Hasira’s biggest headache at Muneer fish restaurant.
“During blackouts we pack our freezers with ice although even that is not always available,” he says. “The worst is when we come in the morning and find there has been a blackout all night long, risking losing thousands of dollars worth of fish.”
At the Shanti Express laundry and dry clean, an industrial generator keeps the services going although even here, the problems persist. Massive washing machines have to restart the washing programme from scratch whenever there is a blackout, wasting much more water, time and energy.
“We can’t always switch on the generator because we share it with the entire building block and it doesn’t depend on us,” says Ayman Al Shanti. “We miss lots of deadlines because of the electricity problems, most of our work gets disrupted, and whenever we have a faulty machine it takes time to get spare parts, but the people understand the situation.”
The Israeli blockade had already made Shanti’s business face an uphill climb. One barrel of dry cleaning material from Israel used to cost him NIS1,800. Nowadays it costs him NIS5,000 per gallon – or one-tenth of the amount he used to get – to import supplies from the tunnels.
“We’ve been in this mess for the last four years, and it only keeps getting worse,” Al Shanti says. Despite the increasing costs, he resists raising prices set some six years ago. “All of us are living in this situation and the people don’t afford more expenses.”
Even at the high class Al Deira Hotel – a little gem in the midst of Gaza overlooking the Mediterranean and whose only visitors in the last four years have been journalists and foreign aid workers – electricity is a nightmare.
“We have to guarantee service, but it’s not easy to generate power with all these blackouts,” says Deputy General Manager Tamer Barakat, who says the hotel is now spending around US$3,000 a month on fuel for the generator. “Our generator is meant to give a couple of hours of uninterrupted power for all our 22 rooms, the cold store, laundry and restaurant, but when you end up using it every day it becomes a problem. Thankfully most of our clients understand the problem, this is Gaza. It’s mostly the journalists who complain most whenever there is no internet available and they need to file a story against a tight deadline.”
For Mohammed Hzeb, a young electrician who repairs home appliances, this is one of the best times in his business, as the number of fridges and washing machines for repairs in his shop testify.
“The sudden blackouts do a lot of damage to these appliances,” he says. “The last month has been the busiest.”
The opposite is true for Al Saqqa home appliances warehouse – a huge, modern shop in Gaza City selling state of the art TVs, fridges, heaters and washing machines that is virtually empty.
“People get discouraged from buying new appliances when they don’t even have the electricity to run them,” says Said, a salesman who says the shop is passing through one of its worst periods in the last 20 years with around a 50% drop in customers.
“It’s bad enough that for the last three years we have had to get everything from the tunnels, with up to 20% of new appliances arriving damaged,” he says as he shows brand new fridges with their doors knocked in. He says the total costs of every item smuggled through the tunnels rises by 100%.
The widespread use of generators is also claiming the lives of Palestinians through fires and carbon monoxide poisoning in cases where generators are left inside. A total of 15 people died and 27 were injured since January in generator-related accidents at home, according to Director of Emergency Services Muawiya Hassanein. Last year, generator fires and carbon monoxide poisoning claimed the lives of 75 people.
Last year, even before the Gaza energy crisis started, it was Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas who described the Hamas-ruled coastal strip as “the emirate of darkness”. Today, few Gazans argue with that, as the migraine-inducing sounds of generators overwhelm the strip inhabited by 1.5 million Palestinians.
“I can barely sleep with the sound of generators at night,” said Mahmoud, a refugee from Jabalia Camp. “You can smell fuel wherever you go in Gaza. We’re inhaling all sorts of shit.”
