A dispute between Egypt and Gaza's Hamas government has produced the worst energy crisis here in years: Gazans are enduring 18-hour-a-day blackouts, fuel is running low for hospital backup generators, raw sewage pours into the Mediterranean Sea for lack of treatment pumps and gas stations have shut down. The fuel and electricity shortages, which have escalated over the past two months, are infuriating long-suffering Gazans who say their basic needs, perhaps more than ever, are being sacrificed for politics. “Life here is getting worse every day,” said Rawda Sami, 22, part of a group of students waiting in vain for public taxis outside the Islamic University. “There is no power, no transportation, and none of the leaders are thinking of us.” Ostensibly the spat revolves around fuel supplies from Egypt — but on a broader level, it is linked to Egypt's troubled relationship with Hamas and its long-standing deep ambivalence toward Gaza itself. Hamas wants not just fuel: It hopes to leverage the crisis into getting Egypt to open a direct trade route with Gaza. Such an outcome might stabilize the Islamic militants' rule over the territory they seized in 2007 from Western-backed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, headquartered in the West Bank. Egypt refuses, wishing to keep Gaza at arms' length, and to avoid absolving Israel from continuing responsibility for the crowded, impoverished slice of Mediterranean coast. Israel withdrew soldiers and settlers from Gaza in 2005, after a 38-year military occupation, but still controls access by air and sea — and, except for the several mile long border with Egypt, by land.
