Refugee Stories

"You Have to Live in Darkness"

Palestine refugee children in Beach Camp – 1952

Sixteen to eighteen hours is a long time to endure without electricity, especially when people are accustomed to life with it. Especially when there are no candles.

Already affected by the ongoing economic crisis, Gazan families have been struggling to cope with intermittent electricity for the past three months. On 28^th June 2006, Israeli air strikes destroyed the only electrical power plant in the Gaza Strip.

The $150 million power plant, which was destroyed a few hours after three Israeli air strikes on Gazan bridges, provided roughly half of the Strip's electricity supply. It could take approximately one year to repair the power plant and to fully restore the Gaza Strip with electricity.

"It's a nightmare for my children", says Mohammed, a 55 year-old Palestine refugee from the Beersheba area in the Negev Desert. His children often wake up during the night and scream because of the darkness.

"There aren’t enough candles in Gaza. You can go all over Gaza [the Gaza Strip] and you won't find candles". Even if candles are available, he says they are in limited supply and are too expensive, selling for triple the usual price of NIS 1 ($0.25). "The borders are closed and you have to live in darkness", explains Mohammad.

Mohammad, who lives with his family of ten in Jabalia Camp, builds an indoor fire in an empty room. Made with cartons and tree branches, the fire is used to cook lentils and the spinach-like greens (khubbezeh) that his children gather from fields.

Although it makes the house smell, the fire is the only alternative for cooking that is available to Mohammad's family. "There is no electricity", the father of five begins. "The gas is expensive and all other energy sources are expensive. There is no money", he laments.

But he considers his family lucky to live on the main road, as part of his house receives light from the street lights ⁽¹⁾. He wants to buy a gas lamp but says they are too expensive—a small container of gas to fill them costs roughly 21 NIS ($5). Harkening back to earlier times, many Gazans are using their kerosene lamps from the 1950s or gas lamps.

Mohammad also considers himself lucky to receive assistance from UNRWA. "The funding of my family is through UNRWA and through nobody else", he insists.

As for other electricity woes, getting stuck in elevators has become a normal occurrence for many.

When we spoke to Mahmoud, a Palestine refugee originally from Jaffa, he had just been freed from the elevator in his apartment building in Rafah.

In Mahmoud’s building, it has taken from twenty minutes to one hour for someone to assist a person trapped in the lift. Residents depend on the two young people in the building who know how to operate the elevator to free them.

An unemployed 50 year-old father of seven with chronic back problems, Mahmoud prefers to stay home than to venture a descent of nine flights of stairs or to risk getting stuck in the elevator.

The electricity outages also hinder his children's ability to study, which is true for most affected children in the Gaza Strip. All of Mahmoud's children are enrolled in UNRWA schools except his eldest, a 21 year-old law student in Gaza. Like others, Mahmoud's children have to arrange their studies during daylight hours.

Gaza’s only electrical power plant, destroyed in June 2006

"Electricity is a catastrophe for us in Gaza", Mahmoud states bitterly. The sporadic power supplies have ruined household appliances. Mahmoud says that he doesn't have any food to put in the broken refrigerator, so he opted to get only the washing machine fixed.

The electricity woes are especially problematic for Muslims during the current holy month of Ramadan. Mohammad says that during suhoor, the morning meal eaten before sunrise during Ramadan, his wife has to feel her way around in the dark.

When asked what alternatives to the electricity problems that he and his family have for winter, Mahmoud predicts that, "Winter is going to be a disaster".