Palestine: Gazans Suffer Due to Fuel and Electricity Shortage · Global Voices
Ola Anan

Over the past decade, the words “Gaza” and “crisis” have become almost complementary. The crises have ranged from war and military raids and invasions, to military occupation, and in this case to an electricity and fuel outage.
In addition to an ongoing Israeli-led blockade, the Gaza Strip is suffering from a fresh fuel crisis, with the only fuel currently available being an overpriced Israeli fuel supply in limited quantities. The shortage of fuel has added to the shortage of electricity, as it is used to supply the main generators of the electricity company, alternative power generators at hospitals, bakeries and sewage pumps, in addition to power generators used in households.
Palestinians wait to fill containers with fuel. Image by Majdi Fathi, copyright Demotix (21/03/2012).
Gaza's netizens have been commenting on the situation (when there is electricity to do so):
@Omar_Gaza: Gaza is heading into very dark dangerous turn because of fuel shortage! Bakeries, schools, hospitals, stores, cars, taxies & life will stop sooooon
The first victim of the power outage facing the Strip was seven-month-old baby Mohammed Al Helou, who died after the generator running his respirator ran out of fuel.
@LeilZahra: As we tweet the energy away, hospitals in #Gaza are denied the life-saving energy to sustain their patients #Gas4Gaza
Shortage of electricity and/or fuel is becoming the most popular topic among Palestinians on social media platforms. Things such as Facebook statuses cursing the electricity company, or happy tweets indicating the return of electricity, have become customary.
The electricity company has been dividing the Gaza Strip into areas and neighborhoods, and each gets a power supply for six hours daily on a rotating basis.
Blogger Randa Abu Ramadan has written a blog post [ar] that analyzes your personality according to the time your house gets electricity:
Moreover, people have to find a way to organize their day according to electricity. Yousef Abu Watfa, a reporter for Al Jazeera Talk, has written [ar] about how his friend's mother is affected when doing housework:
Large numbers of gas tubes are accumulating in stations in the Gaza Strip, as the fuel crisis deepens. Image by Ahmed Deeb, copyright Demotix (05/03/2012).
This could be summarized in a tweet written by Fady [ar]:
Nour Abed, a school teacher, tweets [ar]:
As a recent poll shows that 48 percent of Gazans blame their local government for the fuel crisis in Gaza. Izz Shawa wrote on Twitter [ar]:
Blogger Yasser Ashour also noticed the exchange of accusations between Palestinian officials as he wrote on his blog [ar]:
Although the official representatives of the Gaza government have come out with a number of declarations defending themselves, claiming that a huge “conspiracy” is being conducted against them, a lot of people are still not convinced. Blogger and photographer Khaled Safi writes in a blog post [ar]: