Israel turns off power to hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in the dead of winter – Mondoweiss
Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians are cashed strapped this winter
because Israel is withholding $240 million in tax revenue to the
Palestinian Authority as punishment for joining the ICC. This is
radical, though it’s not unusual and something we’ve come to expect. But
turning off the electricity in the middle of winter as blizzards sweep across the Middle East is nothing short of sadistic. The Los Angeles Times reports
Israel cut the power to more than 700,000 Palestinians in two of
Palestine’s largest urban areas, Nablus and Jenin, for more than 45
minutes “and warned that more outages are coming if Palestinian
officials don’t pay millions of dollars in outstanding debt.”
Citing Yiftah Ron-Tal, the director of Israel Electric Corp. (IEC), the Times reports:
“Customers who do not pay electric bills are
disconnected; yet here we have an entire population that doesn’t pay
while we continue to supply electricity,” he said. “The Palestinian
Authority owes the IEC — meaning the paying consumers — 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.”
