Hamas' latest blackout stunt

Since the tahdiya agreement in June, every violation of the "calm" has resulted in Israel stopping food and fuel delivery to Gaza for a day or so.

The daily rocket barrage that started last week likewise resulted in Israel's stopping fuel deliveries since they started, for six days now.

Hamas is using this opportunity to stage blackouts in Gaza, just like they did last year. They claim that they suffer from a shortage of industrial diesel to run their Gaza City power plant. Just like last time, they already staged a candlelight protest to coincide with their first night of sporadic outages!

What they don't say is that 75% of Gaza's electricity is provided by Israel and Egypt directly and that this supply has not been interrupted.

What they are also not saying is that the many tunnels under Rafah now supply more fuel to Gaza than Israel did before the latest attacks - 150,000 liters a day, compared to the 120,000 that Israel was providing.

Not only that, but the Egyptian diesel is cheaper than Israel's, allowing Gazans to purchase fuel at half the price that Israelis pay! Hamas has already informed Israel that they will not need diesel for their fleet of cars, as they are getting that from Egypt.

Even so, Israel is considering resuming shipments of fuel while rockets continue to be shot at Israel. Thankfully, today it decided not to.

While it is probably true that the Egyptian diesel is not suitable for Gaza's power plant, almost certainly Hamas could get its hands on proper industrial diesel to keep the plant going, but it prefers to stage blackouts to gain world sympathy - and cause its citizens to suffer.