Last week I reported that Gaza's power plant was shut down despite the fact that Israel was providing roughly the same amount of fuel it had been since the "fuel crisis" earlier this year. I guessed that this might be because Hamas was manipulating the fuel supply to pressure Egypt to send through some promised (and free) Qatari fuel instead of being forced to pay for fuel from Israel.There is more evidence that I am right.
The fuel from Qatar started being transferred on Thursday, and there have been no reported power plant shutdowns since then. But the daily amounts of fuel transferred have been roughly the same amount that Israel had been pumping!
COGAT reports that between last Thursday and Tuesday, some 871,000 liters of fuel had been pumped into Gaza (none on Saturday, as far as I can tell, as usual.) But Israel was regularly pumping between 200,000 and 300,000 liters a day itself.
So either Qatar's fuel is magically twice as effective as fuel purchased from Israel, or this entire farce of a "fuel crisis" entirely about Hamas being unwilling to pay market prices for fuel and showing its willingness to put its own people at risk to avoid paying.
Which is exactly what I determined in February.
Look for another "fuel crisis" to erupt when the 30 million liters from Qatar are used up.