On most days in Gaza, the electricity comes on for a few hours, then cuts out. Families plan their lives around the schedule — charging phones, running washing machines, pumping water to rooftop tanks — before the grid goes dark again. Behind that rhythm sits a single aging power station in Nuseirat, a blockade that controls every liter of fuel that feeds it, and a political architecture that has kept Palestinians in the dark, sometimes literally, for nearly two decades.
One Plant, One Turbine at a Time
The Gaza Power Plant (GPP), located in the central Gaza Strip, is the territory’s only electricity-generating facility. Built in the early 2000s and operated by the Gaza Power Generating Company, it was designed to run on industrial diesel or natural gas. At full capacity — with all turbines functioning and fuel flowing — the plant can produce roughly 120 megawatts (MW) of electricity. That figure has rarely been reached in practice, because full fuel supply has rarely been guaranteed.
The gap between what the plant can produce and what Gaza actually needs is staggering. The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA oPt) has repeatedly documented a pre-2023 demand figure exceeding 500 MW for the approximately 2.3 million people living in the Strip. Even when the GPP runs at capacity, it covers less than a quarter of that need. The rest was historically supposed to come from two external sources: electricity purchased from the Israeli national grid, and a smaller supply line from Egypt.
The Israeli Grid: Supply as Leverage
Israel’s electricity company (IEC) has been the dominant external supplier to Gaza, transmitting power through a set of feeder lines that cross the perimeter of the blockade. Before the escalation of 2023, Israel supplied somewhere between 120 and 140 MW through those lines, according to OCHA figures. Egypt contributed a further 27 MW or so through a southern connection. Even combined with GPP output on a good day, the total fell well short of demand — producing the chronic shortfalls that, in the years between 2017 and 2022, meant Gazans received between 10 and 13 hours of electricity per day on average, and sometimes far less during acute crises.
The political dimension of Israeli grid supply is direct and documented. Israeli authorities have periodically reduced or cut electricity transfers as a collective pressure measure. Most notably, in June 2017, the Israeli cabinet voted to reduce electricity supply to Gaza at the request of the Palestinian Authority, which was in a political conflict with Hamas and sought to reduce its payments to the Israeli electricity company on Gaza’s behalf. OCHA and human rights organizations including Gisha and Al-Haq documented the humanitarian consequences: hospitals running on generators around the clock, water pumping systems failing, and sewage treatment plants shutting down and releasing raw waste into the sea.
Adalah — the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel — and other groups challenged the cuts legally, arguing they constituted collective punishment prohibited under Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention. The Israeli Supreme Court declined to halt the cuts on an emergency basis, finding that the government had military-security discretion in the matter. The humanitarian calculus, in the court’s framing, was secondary.
Fuel as a Chokepoint: The Import Mechanism
The GPP runs on industrial diesel trucked into Gaza through the Kerem Shalom crossing — the sole commercial entry point for goods under the blockade. Israel controls not just the crossing’s operational hours and security procedures, but the quantity of fuel permitted to enter on any given week. OCHA has tracked fuel delivery volumes consistently, noting that allowed quantities have fluctuated sharply in response to political events, rocket fire, or unilateral Israeli policy decisions, rather than purely humanitarian need.
The Gaza Power Generating Company has at various points operated on as little as one or two turbines because there was insufficient fuel to run the others. When the plant runs below capacity, operators must choose: ration electricity across more hours at lower intensity, or concentrate supply for fewer hours at usable voltage. Neither option adequately serves hospitals, water desalination plants, or the refrigeration chains that keep food safe.
A 2020 report by UNCTAD on Gaza’s economic situation noted that energy insecurity was among the primary structural constraints on productive capacity in the territory — that businesses could not reliably operate machinery, that cold storage was unreliable, and that the cost of backup power fell disproportionately on small operators and ordinary households who could least afford it.
The Generator Economy: Diesel, Cost, and Pollution
Into the gap left by the GPP and the Israeli grid, a sprawling private generator economy has grown. Every neighborhood in Gaza has its generator operators — entrepreneurs who buy diesel, run large commercial generators, and sell electricity by the ampere to subscribers on a monthly basis. For many families, the generator subscription is a fixed household expense as essential as rent.
The costs are significant. Generator electricity in Gaza has historically run at multiples of the tariff for grid electricity — estimates from OCHA and local reporting have placed it at roughly three to five times more expensive per kilowatt-hour than the subsidized grid rate. For families already living under unemployment rates that B’Tselem and the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS) have documented at above 45 percent in Gaza, that premium is a genuine hardship.
Beyond economics, the generator economy carries an environmental and public health toll. Diesel generators in densely populated urban areas produce nitrogen dioxide, particulate matter, and carbon monoxide. WHO documentation on air quality in conflict-affected settings has flagged generator exhaust as a contributor to respiratory illness, particularly in children. In Gaza’s dense residential blocks, generators often run in courtyards, alleyways, and ground-floor shops — in close proximity to where people live and sleep.
After October 2023: The Grid Goes Dark
The framework described above — precarious but partially functional — collapsed after October 7, 2023. Israel cut electricity supply through the IEC lines entirely. Fuel deliveries through Kerem Shalom were halted, then severely restricted. The GPP itself went offline for extended periods due to lack of fuel and, later, direct damage to infrastructure. OCHA reported in the first weeks of the assault that Gaza was operating at near-zero grid electricity, with only emergency generators — where fuel could be found — keeping critical medical infrastructure minimally alive.
The International Court of Justice, in its January 2024 provisional measures order in South Africa v. Israel, referenced the humanitarian situation in Gaza including the collapse of essential services, and ordered Israel to take measures to ensure the delivery of humanitarian assistance. Whether electricity infrastructure and fuel supply fall within enforceable scope of that order remains contested. On the ground, the lights have largely stayed off.
Sources
- OCHA oPt — Gaza electricity and humanitarian situation reports (multiple years)
- Gisha — Legal Center for Freedom of Movement, Gaza electricity and fuel tracking reports
- Al-Haq — documentation of collective punishment measures including electricity cuts
- Adalah — Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, legal challenges to electricity reductions
- UNCTAD — Report on UNCTAD assistance to the Palestinian people: developments in the economy of the Occupied Palestinian Territory (2020)
- B’Tselem — documentation of Gaza blockade conditions and unemployment
- Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS) — Gaza labor force and economic statistics
- International Court of Justice — Provisional Measures Order, South Africa v. Israel, January 26, 2024
- Fourth Geneva Convention, Article 33 — prohibition on collective punishment
