Egypt cuts electricity to Gaza completely (UPDATE - denied)

The Gaza energy authority this morning announced that Egypt has completely cut the flow of electricity into Gaza, in numerous Arabic media reports.

The Gaza energy authority urged citizens to stop using air conditioners or electric heaters, and to try to only use electricity for lighting.

Gaza usually has three sources of electricity. Israel provides 125 megawatts of power directly through electric lines, the Gaza power plant provides 80 MW and Egypt directly provides about 17 MW.

Since Egypt curtailed the tunnel trade to Gaza and Hamas refused to pay market prices for fuel, allowing the power plant to shut down on November 1, the amount of electric power available for Gaza went down from about 222 MW to 142 MW. Now that amount has been further reduced by another 12%, and Israel is now the only party providing power to Gaza.

Yet Israel is also virtually the only party being blamed for fuel shortages into Gaza by UNRWA, Amnesty, Hamas (in English), European NGOs, Arab media and of course the usual anti-Israel idiots. 

This news has not yet been reported in English anywhere. If Israel cannot be blamed, the media and the NGOs lose interest very quickly. Then, when the real story is obscured by inattentiveness, they will come back and blame Israel anyway.

One new example is this Al Arabiya article about a funny Gaza spoof of the Jean Claude Van Damme's famous commercial for Volvo:

While the commercial doesn't seem to blame Israel (Gazans know the truth), Al Arabiya  does blame Israel for the fuel crisis - based on information from 2006!

UPDATE: The Gaza electric authority now denies this story, saying that there was a technical glitch that stopped the flow of electricity temporarily and it has been fixed.