On May 7, 2016, fire broke out in the Abu al-Hindi home in Gaza’s Shati (Beach) refugee camp. Started by a tipped candle, the flames grew quickly grew out of control.
Three children, Yusra, 3, Rahaf, 2, and Nasser, 6 months, perished in the burning house, and Muhannad, 8, was severely burned. Ali, 6, is the only survivor without physical injuries but lives with deep psychological trauma.
Neighbors attempted to rescue the children by breaking a hole through the wall, but by the time they could reach the children, it was too late.
The fire is a direct result of severe electricity shortages due to the ongoing and tightening Israeli/Egyptian siege and repeated Israeli military assaults.
In April, Gaza’s sole power plant ran out of fuel. Prior to that, the power plant was working at partial capacity due to repeated Israeli military attacks since 2006.
This has only been exacerbated by political infighting between the Palestinian Authority and Hamas.
Since the beginning of 2016, the Palestinian Authority, which is dominated by Fatah, has gradually lifted fuel tax exemptions to Gaza’s power plant and imposed a ‘blue tax’, rendering the power plant unable to purchase fuel and further forcing Gaza’s residents to rely on candlelight.
Deadly candle fires have occurred repeatedly since Israel imposed the siege in 2006. Since 2010, 29 Palestinians, mostly children, have died in home fires.
The fire came just hours after Israeli member of Knesset Bezalel Smotrich said that the Israeli government, rather than private citizens, should carry out revenge attacks against Palestinians, specifically referring to the burning of Palestinian teenager Muhammad Abu Khdeir in occupied East Jerusalem in 2014 and the firebombing attack in the West Bank village of Duma in 2015 which killed baby Ali Dawabshe and his parents as they slept.
While Smotrich’s call to burn Palestinian children alive made headlines in Israeli media, actual burning of children did not. The burning of the Abu al-Hindi family, for which Israel is ultimately responsible, went unnoticed in Israel. Such is the normalization and institutionalization of even the most grotesque forms of violence Israel metes out against Palestinians. Rather than a group of settlers carry out vigilante attacks under the cover of night, the deaths of the Abu al-Hindi children were written by some office worker tasked with overseeing the power Israel allows Gaza’s electrical company to purchase, which is just 45% of the required amount.
No words … … …
A horrible tragedy, but blaming Israel for it?
From the link in the article:
“Most Gazans have no option but to rely on candles for light because power cuts currently leave them without electricity for up to 18 hours a day.
Much of their anger is directed towards the Gaza Electricity Company, which has failed to deliver reliable supplies despite last year banking profits $13.6m.
Others blame the shortages on the ‘blue tax’ on fuel imposed by the West Bank-based Fatah-run Palestinian Authority on industrial fuel imported into Gaza to power the strip’s only electricity plant.
Last month, the United Nations reported that Gaza’s power plant had been forced to shut down because of the PA’s gradual reduction in an exemption on the fuel tax which had previously been in place.
Prior to its closing, Gaza’s plant had provided close to 30 percent of the enclave’s electricity requirements, even operating at only 50 percent capacity.
The remainder of Gaza’s required electricity is bought mostly from Israel but also from Egypt, according to the UN, although power lines from Egypt into southern Gaza are currently not working.”
– See more at: http://www.middleeasteye.net/news/toddlers-burn-death-gaza-blaze-blamed-electricity-blackouts-1142846960#sthash.I72kMW3R.dpuf
So the power shortages are caused mainly by a PA-Hamas dispute, and Israel, in fact , PROVIDES some of Gaza’s electricity.
Yes, Israel is responsible in a number of ways for the ongoing Catastrophe. Israel’s policies were, and continue to be designed to make life intolerable for the tenacious Palestinians, from the acute water and electricity shortages, the crumbling infrastructure, the recurring horrendous bombings that further exacerbate the horror of daily life in Gaza, to the de facto theft of Palestinians’ taxes.
The squabblings between the PLO and Hamas is hardly a surprise. Two organisations with no historic precedent of living in an independent state with self-rule, on top of the horror of the present magnitude, i.e., nothing that could have provided some idea how to handle life in a fragmented state, whose native population has to deal with the many ongoing nightmares with no hope in sight – all have been, and continue to be caused by Israel and its genocidal racists.
Thank you thank you xanadou. Jon S’s comment was so pathological I really was too angry to respond. You said it better than I ever could. I’m sick and tired of the apologists for the genocidal sadistic Israelite government.
In the horrible open air prison which is Gaza, unspeakable dramas unavoidably happen everyday. But only the people who suffer may know about them.