The Los Angeles Times reports Israel cut the power to more than 700,000 Palestinians in two of Palestine\u2019s largest urban areas, Nablus and Jenin, for more than 45 minutes \u201cand warned that more outages are coming if Palestinian officials don\u2019t pay millions of dollars in outstanding debt.\u201d<\/p>\n
Citing Yiftah Ron-Tal, the director of Israel Electric Corp. (IEC), the Times reports:<\/p>\n
\u201cCustomers who do not pay electric bills are disconnected; yet here we have an entire population that doesn\u2019t pay while we continue to supply electricity,\u201d he said. \u201cThe Palestinian Authority owes the IEC \u2014 meaning the paying consumers \u2014 nearly 2 billion Israeli shekels [about $500 million]. A year has passed since I said this last and nothing has changed. Starting today, we will begin restricting electricity.\u201d<\/p>\n
The irony here, of withholding the months of tax revenue while demanding payment of a debt, on top of occupation policy preventing Palestinians from being self sufficient, is not lost on anyone. More from the Times:<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is clearly collective punishment against the Palestinian people,\u201d [Ghassan Shakaa, the mayor of Nablus and chairman of the board of the North Electricity Company, which supplies Nablus, Jenin] said. According to Shakaa, the IEC cut power shortly after notifying his company that it owed more than $10 million, and did not wait for an answer or for payment\u2026\u2026<\/p>\n
Rashid Fadda, who lives in Nablus and works as a technician for the local electric company, said the power cuts came as a surprise.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe heard the Israeli company threatening to cut power supply to the West Bank but no one really thought it will happen,\u201d he said. \u201cMy work depends on electricity and so when the power was cut off, we had to stop work.\u201d<\/p>\n
In more winter news, IMEMC reports settlers from the Gilo settlement have \u201copened its barrages, throwing all excess rain and melted snow water\u201d flooding Aida Refugee camp near Bethlehem.<\/p>\n
Israel opened dams near the border of Gaza on Sunday morning, flooding the valley causing hundreds of Palestinians to evacuate their homes. <\/p>\n
Source: mondoweiss.net<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Los Angeles Times reports Israel cut the power to more than 700,000 Palestinians in two of Palestine\u2019s largest urban areas, Nablus and Jenin, for more than 45 minutes \u201cand warned that more outages are coming if Palestinian officials don\u2019t pay millions of dollars in outstanding debt.\u201d Citing Yiftah Ron-Tal, the director of Israel Electric … Continue reading “Israel turns off power to Palestinians”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2961,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,123],"tags":[457,286,4676,178,664,5830],"class_list":["post-17873","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","category-world","tag-electricity","tag-gaza","tag-icc","tag-israel","tag-palestine","tag-power"],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":false,"source_text":false,"source_url":false},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17873","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2961"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17873"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17873\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17874,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17873\/revisions\/17874"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17873"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17873"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17873"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}