Egypt sends 22 fuel shipments to Gaza amid power crisis

CAIRO – 1 July 2017: Egypt sent 22 truckloads of fuel to the Gaza Strip through the Rafah border crossing on Friday to ease the energy crisis experienced by two million Palestinians living in the province.

Sources in Gaza said the Palestinian side has already received four batches of fuel coming from Egypt, most recently a 14-truck shipment in the last week.
Egypt will reportedly continue to supply fuel to run the Gaza Strip's only power plant. Fuel trucks will be permitted to enter Gaza through the Rafah crossing even if it remains closed to other traffic, sources said.

The Egyptian move came after Israel had slashed its electricity supply to the strip by 40 percent in June, in response to a request made by the Palestinian Authority located in the West Bank after Hamas could no longer afford to participate in payment for running the utility.
The decision has left Palestinians in Gaza without electricity for all but four hours per day and has aggravated the existing sewage and water crisis.

The Egyptian fuel aid marked an improvement in relations between Hamas and Egypt after years of rift. These diesel shipments are the first of its kind to Gaza since Hamas took over the power in 2007 and could provide seven hours of power for three days.
A delegation of Hamas headed by the movement’s chief, Yehya Al-Sinwar, has met Egyptian security officials in Cairo this month, where they agreed on the fuel imports, according to sources close to those negotiations.

In May, Hamas released a new manifesto retracting all previous claims for Israel's destruction as well as outlining the end of its affiliation with the Muslim Brotherhood.

Hamas’s original 1988 charter deemed the movement as the Palestinian offshoot of Egypt’s Brotherhood. These old ties with the Muslim Brotherhood - labeled as a terrorist group in Egypt - have had its toll on the Palestinian movement’s relations with Cairo. However, the new charter seems to aim at better relations with the neighbor that controls Gaza Strip’s Rafah crossing.