Triple-digit heat in the Gaza Strip is exacerbating electricity shortages and residents’ frustrations with both Hamas and Israel, Reuters reports. The more-than 2.3 million people living in the narrow piece of land under a 16-year Israeli blockade endure power outages for as much as 12 hours a day. “Our dreams have shrunk from (achieving) the right of return and liberating the homeland to one extra hour of electricity,” local journalist Abdel-Hamid Abdel-Ati told Reuters (parenthetical Reuters’).
Some people and businesses are able to afford solar panels or generators to lessen the impacts of the power cuts, but others are forced to use poor substitutes or go without. “We haven’t witnessed such heat in years, and we get electricity for around six hours a day, so I can’t fan my children, so I am using the plastic tray to fan them because of the severe heat,” Yasmin Fojo, a mother of five from Nahrelbared camp in southern Gaza Strip, told Reuters. “I don’t have money to buy a fan and if I did they would cut off the power and I end up in the heat, therefore, I am using those plastic trays,” added 90-year-old, Um Khattab Dula. (Reuters)