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- [00:00]
Zach Goldbaum
Wondry plus subscribers can listen to new episodes of Lawless Planet early and ad free right now. Join Wondry in the Wondry app or on Apple Podcasts.
- [00:27]
Ghada Abdelfattah
Hello, this is Ghada, and today I'm standing inside Jihada Al Aqsa hospital in their in central Gaza. Above me are the Israeli drones, hovering and hovering 24 7. They have never left our skies.
- [00:41]
Zach Goldbaum
That's Palestinian journalist Ghada Abdelfattah. For the past few months, she's been helping us on the ground in Gaza, reporting on what power, specifically electrical power, means during wartime.
- [00:54]
Ghada Abdelfattah
I'm seeing right now a couple of ambulances on standby waiting to be called for any emergency. I'm seeing right now the main entrance filled with injuries and their beloved ones. Dead bodies are covered in white coffins where their family members take them to their funerals.
- [01:12]
Zach Goldbaum
Shortly after Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, 2023, killing nearly 1200 people and taking 251 hostages, Israel cut electricity to Gaza. They also implemented a total blockade, preventing the delivery of fuel to the enclave's only power plant. This hospital, which continued to be powered by two overworked generators, instant became a kind of makeshift refugee camp.
- [01:39]
Ghada Abdelfattah
At one point, the hospital was overflowing with families who had nowhere else to go. They came here after being forcibly displaced from their homes, believing or maybe hoping that the hospital would offer them some form of a protection, that it might be a safe zone for them.
- [02:01]
Zach Goldbaum
The death toll in Gaza has surpassed 65,000, and many experts believe that number is actually much, much higher. Of the survivors, over half a million are believed to be facing famine. And the entire population of Gaza is said to be experiencing food insecurity. It is one reason why a United nations commission recently declared that Israel is committing genocide, which Israel rejects. In addition, Rada's fellow journalists are being killed at a pace never before seen in modern warfare. About a month after her visit to Al Aqsa, five journalists were killed at another hospital not far away.
- [02:42]
Ghada Abdelfattah
I'm walking through the emergency corridor. The air is thick, not just with dust or disinfectant, but with something heavier. It is fatigue. It is grief. It is the smell of dried blood.
- [02:55]
Zach Goldbaum
Ghada is on her way to meet Dr. Mohammed Shaheen, an orthopedic surgeon. Since the total blackout began, Gaza's healthcare system has teetered on the edge of collapse.
- [03:09]
Dr. Mohammed Shaheen
Before the war, there was an electricity line that came to us 24 hours a day from the power generation station in central Gaza Strip.
- [03:18]
Zach Goldbaum
Now that power plant is inactive. The hospital generators trade off in 24 hour shifts, but the fuel needed to power them hasn't been available for months.
- [03:32]
Dr. Mohammed Shaheen
Currently, to face this crisis, we disconnect electricity from departments that don't need electricity. So if you came at night, you might find the entire internal medicine department without electricity. It's forbidden to cut electricity from the intensive care unit. It's forbidden to cut electricity from the operating room. But in Gaza, everything is different. Electricity is cut from the intensive care unit and electricity is cut from the operating room, and we lose patients.
- [04:02]
Zach Goldbaum
Dr. Shaheen estimates the hospital loses power completely every three days or so. And in the past two years, it's happened at least twice while he was personally in the middle of surgery.
- [04:16]
Dr. Mohammed Shaheen
When electricity cuts in the operating room, we raise our hands and stop. You need an X ray machine, you need the air conditioning to work. You need excellent lighting. We stop for a minute or two. Then some efforts are made by lighting. Flashlights, headlights, some lighting that might make a very slight difference. Sometimes to stop bleeding, to press on the wound, to clean the wound, to close the wound. Simple matters.
- [04:46]
Zach Goldbaum
These simple matters can be the difference between life or death. And without power, for vital necessities like water, sewage and healthcare, it increasingly means death. Before the lights went out, though, Gaza was closer than you might think to controlling its own energy destiny. But the closer they got, the harder others worked to stop it. From Wondry. I'm Zach Goldbaum and this is Lawless Planet. Each week we tell a new story about the true crimes fueling the climate crisis and the people fighting to save the planet or destroy it.
- [05:29]
Ariel Ezrahi
Everything that we had worked for seemed to be torn apart.
- [05:48]
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- [06:29]
Zach Goldbaum
As I'm recording this, Hamas is supposedly weighing a plan proposed by the US to end the war. We don't know what's going to happen, but right now, while Israel continues its full scale assault on Gaza, there is another, lesser known dimension to the conflict that is central to the Strip's man made humanitarian power. In the absence of electricity, food preservation, cooking and water systems, and local agricultural production have all collapsed. Now Gaza is almost entirely dependent on outside aid. After October 7, Israeli officials defended their decision to cut power to the Strip. I'm not going to feed electricity or water to my enemies. If anyone else wants, that's fine. I mean, it's absurd that Israel has been providing electricity to the Gaza Strip until now. This is enemy territory. It's true, Israel does provide power to its enemies. But it's worth asking why that is and whether this system of dependence is really just an act of benevolence, or if it's the deliberate result of a decades long strategy, one designed to keep energy firmly in Israel's hands. Over the years, strikes on infrastructure, control over fuel and precarious grid access have turned electricity into a flashpoint of the conflict. And as the planet warms, limited resources will only become more and more contested. This episode is about how energy became another weapon of war. It's a story about how electrical power begets political power, and about what it means when both can be switched off at a moment's notice. I remember you telling me something when we first started talking about this being a war of details. Could you explain what you meant by that?
- [08:28]
Radha Abdelfattah
It's not only a war of bombs or a war of airstrikes, but in this war there are immense needs in every aspect of life.
- [08:35]
Zach Goldbaum
That's Ghada Abdul Fattah again, our producer in Gaza, for example, you think a.
- [08:41]
Radha Abdelfattah
Lot about finding food. If you find food, will you afford buying the woods because there is no fuel? Most of the times you walk in the street, you find the children looking for wood, garbage pieces, an empty bottle of water. They wanted to take it in order to have it as a fuel for their home.
- [08:58]
Zach Goldbaum
Ghada is talking about a phenomenon that's grown out of the power crisis in Gaza. On the side the road or next to collapsed buildings, you can often find kids scavenging for water bottles or plastic bags, anything that they can melt down to turn into fuel. I stay here for 12 hours between smoke, fire and burning, says one boy to the Associated Press. With his face covered in soot, he feeds the plastic waste into a big makeshift burner that belches out thick black smoke. It's completely risky, he says, referring to the health impacts of breathing in the noxious fumes. But he needs the money, and if he doesn't do it, generators won't work. It's one of the many ways Gazans are adapting to the absence of power, a crisis that has taken a terrible toll on the environment. Wastewater treatment has halted, sending an estimated hundred thousand cubic meters of sewage spewing into the Mediterranean every day, with groundwater polluted. And most of Gaza's desalination plants also shut down due to the blackouts. Gazans are going thirsty, and waterborne diseases like cholera and even polio have reemerged. But while it's reached new depths, this crisis didn't begin on October 7th. Power has never come easily in Gaza. There are three unreliable transmission lines from Egypt, but really most of it comes from two places. About half from 10 Israeli power lines, and then the rest. About one third of the Strip's electricity comes from its only power station, the Gaza Power Plant.
- [10:55]
Dr. Rafiq Maliha
This project is my life, actually, because I started with the development phase and worked with it for more than 30 years.
- [11:05]
Zach Goldbaum
That's Dr. Rafiq Maliha, the plant's general manager. Dr. Malia is a large man with a Dark Mustache, a PhD in mechanical engineering, and a singular mission to keep the lights on in Gaza.
- [11:19]
Dr. Rafiq Maliha
We started the first construction in 1999. There was a big ceremony, opening ceremony for the construction.
- [11:28]
Zach Goldbaum
On October 26, 1999, Dr. Malia woke up early in the morning, put on a suit, and made his way to the empty property just a few miles from the Israeli border.
- [11:38]
Dr. Rafiq Maliha
The location for the power plant is very nice, freely area with a lot of orange trees, olive trees. Sometimes I feel sorry that we have this power plant at that location, but the scarcity of land in Gaza is quite difficult.
- [11:57]
Zach Goldbaum
There are a few other dignitaries at the groundbreaking ceremony that day. Palestinian President Yasser Arafat, clad in his trademark keffiyeh, lays the foundation stone. At the event, the minister of the Palestinian Energy Authority shares remarks and there's a delegation from the Swedish construction company. Other than that, the opening ceremony gets little fanfare. But for Dr. Maliha, it's a moment full of promise. This is the first independent power project for Palestinians. For decades, they'd been dependent on Israel. In fact, thanks to a military order from 1967, all electrical infrastructure in the occupied territories was under Israeli control. Palestinians were barred from assembling any new infrastructure without IDF approval. And those approvals were rare, really.
- [12:48]
Dr. Rafiq Maliha
Electricity or power is life. The faster you can bring electricity to the people in Gaza, the faster you can have water, you can have better hospitals, sewage. All the key life issues are linked to the supply of power and electricity.
- [13:09]
Zach Goldbaum
The Gaza power plant was born out of the 1993 Oslo Accords. Buried in the agreement was a call for cooperation in the fields of electricity and energy, as well as the establishment of an independent energy authority. Now, after five years of planning, Dr. Malia was there to watch the moment workers broke ground, everything was a glory.
- [13:30]
Dr. Rafiq Maliha
I mean, because there was a lot of hope that the conflict could stop and cooperation could help everybody to live in dignity and prosperity.
- [13:44]
Zach Goldbaum
But just a year after breaking ground, the project looked to be in jeopardy. First, there was a Palestinian uprising against Israeli rule known as the second Intifada.
- [13:58]
Dr. Rafiq Maliha
Everything was more difficult, more complicated, and the construction stopped because of the security situation.
- [14:09]
Zach Goldbaum
Then there was a problem with the American energy giant that had signed a 20 year deal to invest in the power plant. That company, it was called Enron. Yeah, that Enron. Guilty verdicts in the biggest case of corporate fraud in history, 38 counts. It turned out that Enron was cooking the books and engaged in widespread financial fraud. They collapsed, dealing Dr. Malia's project yet another blow. Finally, in 2003, after six years of planning, three years of construction and tests, and $140 million, the Gaza power plant roared to life and began commercial operations.
- [14:50]
Dr. Rafiq Maliha
And that really was a very great moment to Gaza and to us, of course.
- [14:56]
Zach Goldbaum
The plant has eight black smokestacks and turbines that run on industrial diesel, second only to coal for the amount of carbon it emits. But the plant was also designed to switch to natural gas if that resource ever became available. Then, barely three years after it was built, the militant Islamist movement Hamas rose to power in Gaza. In June 2006, they went to war with Israel. And in the early morning hours of June 28, the Gaza power plant became one of the first casualties of the conflict.
- [15:30]
Dr. Rafiq Maliha
I was at my home and I received a call from the plant that there was an Israeli strike.
- [15:36]
Zach Goldbaum
Israeli fighter jets had attacked the plant.
- [15:41]
Dr. Rafiq Maliha
The bombing happened almost midnight and we have about 15 staff members were there. And of course, nobody was expecting this. We have six transformers. So the attack, those transformers, the bombs.
- [15:59]
Zach Goldbaum
Also struck a giant tank of standby diesel fuel.
- [16:02]
Dr. Rafiq Maliha
So everything was lighting up behind the power plant. Even though it is midnight, the oil.
- [16:09]
Zach Goldbaum
In the transformers burned for about a month.
- [16:12]
Dr. Rafiq Maliha
It's really bad scene, actually, when you see that after only three years of commercial operation, you have this nice facility partially destroyed.
- [16:27]
Zach Goldbaum
To save fuel for generators. Garbage collection stopped, toxic waste polluted the Gaza Strip and the ensuing power cuts upended people's lives. That's a tailor in Gaza explaining to the Israeli human rights group at Selim how in the wake of the 2006 strike, his whole neighborhood ran off a single generator. He explains how the power would switch on and off arbitrarily, which meant the Taylor's wife struggled to make food for their Family. If we are making bread, she says, sometimes it stops in the middle of baking. They couldn't refrigerate their food because the electricity was out for so much of the day, so they threw it away. But while Palestinians struggled through the power cuts, something else was taking place in the dark. In June 2007, a year after the Gaza power plant was bombed, the Bush administration armed Yasser Arafat's Fatah party in an effort to root out Hamas. The clash set off a bloody civil war known as the Battle for Gaza. In the end, Fatah lost and was driven out of the Strip entirely. Hamas, now stronger than ever, seized total control of all of Gaza. Israel responded with a full blockade. So as Dr. Maliha desperately scrambled to rebuild the power plant, the Strip was hermetically sealed from the outside world. No equipment entered for repairs, no fuel. Through regular crossing points, a financial boycott followed. So Dr. Maliha and the Gaza power plant needed to find another method to power the Strip. And soon the tools would begin to enter a new way underground. In the years following the blockade, a complex tunnel system was built underground, a rabbit warren of an estimated 500 different passageways, beginning in Egypt and ending up in Gaza. They're typically about half a kilometer long and 20 to 25 meters deep. Everything from weapons to cars to cows came through the tunnels. And, of course, fuel.
- [18:54]
Dr. Rafiq Maliha
Actually, in the beginning, we cannot accept a fuel without a certificate because you are endangering the turbines.
- [19:05]
Zach Goldbaum
But over time, Dr. Meliha says, they were forced to use whatever fuel they could get. What didn't enter underground went through a stringent IDF review process. Anything that could be deemed dual use, meaning used for civilian or military purposes, would be withheld. The definition was applied to everything from fire extinguishers to sewing machines to musical instruments, and definitely to batteries. So in November 2008, when the Gaza power plant's backup batteries failed and the turbines stopped running, Dr. Maliha's team had to think fast.
- [19:40]
Dr. Rafiq Maliha
There was a problem with the batteries for the turbines, so the only situation we have is to use what is available.
- [19:50]
Zach Goldbaum
They connect 17012 volt car batteries to restart the turbines, and it works. Dr. Meliha is a mechanical engineer by training, but to run a power generation facility in Gaza, he's had to become a MacGyver of sorts. Over the ensuing years, the Gaza power plant would continue to limp along, providing a fraction of Gaza's energy needs. The plant will be damaged again and again and often shut down entirely due to fuel shortages.
- [20:21]
Dr. Rafiq Maliha
To survive, you had to find a way or to go back, instead of modern life, you had to go back 10 years or 20 years, 100 years, so that you can manage.
- [20:36]
Zach Goldbaum
But what makes this situation even more maddening is that only 19 miles off the Gaza coast sits an untapped energy resource that could power Gaza for years and at one point might have changed its very future. It's September 27, 2000, nearly a year after the groundbreaking ceremony for the Gaza power plant. On this day, Palestinian President Yasser Arafat is on a boat heading toward a huge British owned drilling rig called the Gaza Marine.
- [21:32]
Michael Barron
Arafat was taken to where the rig was situated, where it drilled the well, say about 20 odd miles from the Gaza shore.
- [21:40]
Zach Goldbaum
That's Michael Barron, who would later join British Gas Group, the company that operated the rig, as a political risk analyst. A week earlier, BG had lowered a diamond tip drill 1900ft into the water to explore for gas beneath the seafloor. It was the first project of its kind in Palestinian territorial waters and it was successful. The reserves were estimated at 1 trillion cubic feet and would meet Palestine's energy demands for about a decade. There were even plans to export some gas to both Egypt and Israel, a huge boon for the fragile Palestinian economy.
- [22:17]
Michael Barron
There was a great deal of excitement and a buzz that Palestinians had their own natural resource and turns out probably the largest and most valuable natural resource.
- [22:27]
Zach Goldbaum
The Palestinians have on board the rig. Arafat says this is a gift from our God, to our people, to our children, to, to our women, to our people inside and outside, to our refugees and those who are living here on our land. Then he gives a signal to the crew to light the flare on the floating platform. Gas from the test well burns overhead. He recites a passage from the Quran saying the weak and dispossessed of today will become the leaders and heirs of the future.
- [23:01]
Michael Barron
Arafat made some very over exaggerated claims that he'd turn Gaza into the next Singapore. But it would also be a secure, stable source of fuel for the Palestinian economy.
- [23:13]
Zach Goldbaum
Not only that, but this would allow the Gaza power plant to run on natural gas as it was designed to do. Palestinians could have energy and financial independence and it would represent a seismic shift in the conflict. Israel, which had no fuel of its own and was boycotted by its oil producing Arab neighbors, would benefit from the nearby energy too. It was a high stakes partnership that would benefit everyone, but only if the two sides could work together. Then, on the very next day, the second intifada began. Mr. Sharon, Mr. Sharon, can you tell us how was your experience? It's September 28, 2000, Ariel Sharon, the hardline Israeli leader of the conservative opposition party, is leaving a tour of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. He's flanked by several hundred heavily armed riot police. Palestinian and US officials had urged then Prime Minister Ehud Barak to prohibit the visitors. It's a holy site to both Jews and Muslims. And with tensions rising, the visit is seen as a provocation. Palestinian protesters begin hurling stones and other projectiles in the direction of Jewish worshippers. At the Western Wall. The protesters are shot with rubber bullets. Dozens are injured. The next day, more protesters arrived. This time, the Israeli police used rubber coated metal bullets and live ammunition to disperse the demonstrators, killing four Palestinians and injuring 200. From 1987 to 1993, the first intifada, which means uprising, had led to hundreds of deaths. The second Intifada took a much darker turn. Palestinian suicide bombers targeting civilians became a more common occurrence inside Israel. The IDF responded, raining rockets down from helicopters on Palestinian villages. Roughly a thousand Israelis and over 3,000 Palestinians were estimated to have been killed over the years of the Intifada.
- [25:25]
Michael Barron
Throughout the Second Father and beyond, there were those in the Israeli political system who said that the gas belonged to Israel, that previous Israeli government under Prime Minister Barak had gifted this to the Palestinians. But it was a gift that could be taken back when Israel wanted.
- [25:45]
Zach Goldbaum
In 2001, just as the Gaza power plant is being completed, Ariel Sharon, who by now was Prime Minister of Israel, declared that Israel would never buy gas from Palestine.
- [25:57]
Michael Barron
Initially, his reaction was this is money for terrorists. And he opposed not just the Gaza marine deal, but anything that helped the Palestinians. Essentially, he was never going to do a deal with the Arafat.
- [26:09]
Zach Goldbaum
Over the next few years, two cases heard by the Israeli Supreme Court further undermine the project. First, after a group of Israeli and American companies sued to invalidate British gas license, the court ruled that neither Israel nor the Palestinians had sovereignty over the gas fields. They were, in effect, no man's waters. Then Another case in 2007 said the Israeli government also couldn't sell the gas that came from Gaza Marine, and so.
- [26:39]
Michael Barron
Any deal would have been worthless because the gas wouldn't have been able to enter the Israeli market.
- [26:45]
Zach Goldbaum
On top of that, once Hamas took control of the Gaza Strip in 2007, Israel reduced Palestinian maritime access to just six nautical miles, down from 20 outlined in the Oslo Accords. So with Israeli naval vessels patrolling freely in Palestinian territorial waters, the natural gas fields were now off limits. In the wake of these setbacks, a project potentially worth billions of dollars was slipping out of reach. And just a few Miles away, Israel was about to make a discovery of its own that would make Gaza's tenuous energy future even more stark. Israel has made two large fines in the last 18 months. It's thought the fields may hold nearly 700 billion cubic meters of gas. In 2009, an Israeli American consortium of energy firms discovered a large natural gas deposit 80 kilometers off the coast of Israel. Two years later, in December 2010, they discovered another gas field. And it was even bigger. The world's largest deepwater gas discovery in a decade. Together, the two fields are 30 times bigger than the Gaza Marine. It was a monumental change. Israel, which had always imported energy, was about to become a net exporter of gas, a regional energy power player.
- [28:09]
Michael Barron
What it should have meant was that Israel therefore no longer had any reason or interest in blocking Palestinian developing Gaza Marine gas. Obviously that did not happen and I think that's because there is a long standing overall Israeli policy to control Palestinian affairs.
- [28:29]
Zach Goldbaum
But that is not what they were saying publicly in April 2011.
- [28:34]
Dr. Rafiq Maliha
So we are announcing a series of steps intended to make Gaza independent of Israeli infrastructure by helping develop their electricity plants, water, sewage treatment.
- [28:46]
Zach Goldbaum
That is Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. He's standing at a press conference with former British Prime Minister Tony Blair. At the time, Blair ran the office of the Quartet, a group composed of the un, eu, US and Russia with the mandate of furthering peace and economic initiatives for Palestinians. I thank the Prime Minister for his personal involvement in and support for these measures. The most important is a long standing request of the Palestinian Authority for an agreement to revive discussions on the vital project of Gaza Marine gas field. But these were empty promises. British gas had lost interest in the project and with no commercial partners, it Gaza Marine was dead in the water. So the office of the Quartet focused their attention on getting gas to Gaza a different way.
- [29:42]
Ariel Ezrahi
The power plant in Gaza, which was originally built to be running on gas, should one day have that gas connection. Right. So the gas for Gaza is a project to bring natural gas from the Israeli natural gas network to the Gaza Strip.
- [29:56]
Zach Goldbaum
That's Ariel israhi, who in 2015 was Tony Blair's energy advisor at the Quartet. He'd been approached by Blair to come up with a plan that would generate energy cooperation between the Israelis and the Palestinians. But as he began talking to both sides, it was clear the Palestinians were skeptical. That's because Ariel is Israeli American.
- [30:19]
Ariel Ezrahi
I remember within literally days of arriving, I got notified that Mohammad Mustafa, who was then the Deputy Prime Minister, summons me to his office in Ramallah and It was very clear to me he wanted to suss me out. I basically said, look, yes, I grew up in Jerusalem, yes, I'm Israeli, American, but you know, I've worked for the last couple of decades on energy issues and I'd love to support your efforts.
- [30:46]
Zach Goldbaum
Here was Ariel's pitch.
- [30:49]
Ariel Ezrahi
We showed them that the gas was going to be the cheapest form of electricity for them to generate. It's going to be cheaper than the electricity they buy from Israel, be cheaper from what they get from Egypt, and.
- [30:58]
Zach Goldbaum
It would make sense for the Palestinian Authority. It raised a difficult question. Was deepening their dependence on Israel worth the trade for more reliable energy?
- [31:10]
Ariel Ezrahi
The Palestinian side said, look, if the Israelis agree to do this project, then.
- [31:15]
Zach Goldbaum
We will also agree with a soft yes from the Palestinian Authority. Ariel turned his attention to convincing the Israelis and they came back with an.
- [31:25]
Ariel Ezrahi
Answer after some weeks. And they said, look, we'll come as observers and not as full members. And I said, frankly, you can come as my mother in law, but just please show up in the room and let's talk and get this thing sorted.
- [31:40]
Zach Goldbaum
With the Palestinian Authority on board and the Israelis involved in a sort of observer mother in law capacity, the project inched closer to becoming a reality. The Palestinians would get cheap, supposedly secure energy. And for the Israelis, it was a potential financial windfall. An energy client locked in for life. Ariel organized a task force and one of the first people to get involved was the mustachioed MacGyver running the Gaza power plant, Dr. Rafiq Maliha.
- [32:11]
Ariel Ezrahi
You felt that the power plant was really his baby. He was really concerned about things getting done fast enough. He was often complaining about things not happening fast enough.
- [32:20]
Zach Goldbaum
Dr. Maliha's frustration was understandable. This was after years of the Gaza power plant operating in fits and starts under near constant warfare. As the Gas for Gaza project dragged on, Ariel's team had to navigate a political minefield between not only the Israelis, but different factions within Palestinian leadership.
- [32:42]
Ariel Ezrahi
There have always been very, very complicated relations because Hamas is in control of the Gaza Strip and the Palestinian Authority PLO is controlling the West Bank.
- [32:56]
Zach Goldbaum
In fact, disagreements between Gaza's Hamas led government and the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah over who should pay the power bill have also led to energy disruptions. So while Ariel says Hamas was aware of the Gas for Gaza project and committed to not botching it, the Quartet had to deal with this tricky dynamic. Gazans pay their electricity bills to the Gaza Electricity Distribution Company, the public utility that distributes power from the plant. And while those payments are supposed to be collected by the Palestinian Authority. Some of that money has historically made it to Hamas. So the Gas for Gaza task force was bending over backward to make sure no funds would go to a group that much of the west designated as a terrorist organization. But something else was happening behind closed doors, a strategy of deliberately undermining the Palestinian Authority. Israel's partners in the Gaza Gaza project, we know.
- [33:55]
Ariel Ezrahi
So now it wasn't just projects, but the Netanyahu government had a policy of suitcases of cash, et cetera, going into the Gaza Strip.
- [34:02]
Zach Goldbaum
And it's clear that he did this.
- [34:03]
Ariel Ezrahi
For his own political reasons. He wanted to divide and conquer. He wanted to, to undermine the prominence of the Palestinian Authority. So he thought that by strengthening Gaza and Hamas that that would be a way to do it.
- [34:15]
Zach Goldbaum
Everyone from Israel's far right finance minister to Netanyahu himself have both publicly and privately echoed this sentiment. Hamas is an asset and the Palestinian Authority is a liability. If you want to prevent a Palestinian state, everything must be done to bolster Hamas and undermine the more moderate Palestinian Authority. They did so by reportedly allowing Qatar to secretly shuttle millions of dollars in cash to Hamas, which Netanyahu claims to have encouraged only on humanitarian grounds. Some of that money went to buying fuel to keep the power plant running, some to infrastructure projects, and some to building Hamas's military machine. But with momentum on their side, and the threat of Hamas contained, the gas pipeline was about to get the boost it needed. The Netherlands has agreed to help build a pipeline to provide gas and water to Gaza. It's September 2016, and Benjamin Netanyahu is in the Netherlands, standing next to Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte.
- [35:21]
Dr. Rafiq Maliha
Mark, I want to express my appreciation for your willingness to help us advance peace with our Palestinian neighbors.
- [35:29]
Zach Goldbaum
The two share platitudes, but there's little said at the press conference about how the project would advance peace. Benjamin Netanyahu expressed a wish to help the people of Gaza. He said laying the pipeline was the first step. Meanwhile, protesters in the street expressed their belief that while in Holland, Netanyahu should be sent to the Hague for war crimes. In the end, the press conference marks the beginning of a new phase for the pipeline. Feasibility studies, environmental assessments, additional funding, some coming from Qatar, some from the eu. And by the time the project was in its implementation stage, Ariel Ezrahi was ready to move on.
- [36:08]
Ariel Ezrahi
So spring 2022. And at this point I also felt like I had done my mission because the project had reached the stage that you could get to shovels in the ground and. But I was ecstatic.
- [36:24]
Zach Goldbaum
Then, just a year later, on October 7, 2023, everything would change. Yet.
- [36:53]
Ariel Ezrahi
September 23, I was asked if I could come to the Gaza border and talk about energy solutions for Gaza in cooperation with the Israelis.
- [37:03]
Zach Goldbaum
By the fall of 2023, Ariel Azrahi had left the Quartet. The Gas for Gaza project was still moving ahead, and earlier that summer, Israel had even given preliminary approval to revive the Gaza marine project. It's hard to know why the approval came when it did, but some speculate it was a concession to the Palestinians to encourage countries like Saudi Arabia to normalize relations with Israel. Whatever the reason, after 23 years in limbo, there was finally movement on the project. It was good news for Gaza and its struggling power plant. And as Ariel landed in Israel for the conference, he felt a glimmer of hope.
- [37:43]
Ariel Ezrahi
The host was a gentleman called Ophel Lipskin, and he spoke on a panel right before my panel. He said he was focusing on renewable energy. And he said, look, both sides of the border need to have energy. We can cooperate on this. We could do great projects. You know, I'm a great believer in coexistence.
- [38:01]
Zach Goldbaum
Afir Lipstein had made a name for himself in Israel, advocating for an industrial zone in his city where Gazans could be granted permits to come work. He believed that if Palestinians had a stake in the city, it would ensure that they would protect it too. Then came October 7th.
- [38:22]
Ariel Ezrahi
I'm in Berlin and I start hearing all the horrors.
- [38:25]
Zach Goldbaum
Israel's prime minister says his country is at war. Hamas earlier launched a surprise attack, firing thousands of rockets and crossing the Gaza border by by land, sea and air. 22 on the morning of October 7, Hamas militants launched Operation Al Aqsa Flood. They stormed the Eretz crossing, flew over security barriers in motorized paragliders, and infiltrated numerous kibbutzim along the border. Nearly 1,200 people were killed and 251 were taken hostage. The Israeli government says a substantial number.
- [39:00]
Ghada Abdelfattah
Of Israeli citizens and soldiers have been kidnapped by Hamas.
- [39:04]
Ariel Ezrahi
And one of the first things I hear is that Ofilipskin was killed when his kibbutz was attacked and he went out to protect his family. It then subsequently emerged that his son also died.
- [39:18]
Zach Goldbaum
Israel's retaliation has begun. All day, air strikes hit the Gaza Strip.
- [39:26]
Ariel Ezrahi
Everything that we had worked for seemed to be torn apart.
- [39:33]
Zach Goldbaum
At his home In North Gaza, Dr. Meliha woke on October 7, 2023, to the distant sound of air raid sirens blaring from across the border. As evacuation orders were announced, he headed to the power plant.
- [39:49]
Dr. Rafiq Maliha
In October 7, I went in the morning and I asked all the management to come, we made what we call as emergency plan. Emergency plan means that minimize the movement for our staff, make shifts instead of 6 hours, 24 hours and we agreed what to do for the fuel and we hope that things may be, I mean different. But unfortunately situation deteriorates.
- [40:24]
Zach Goldbaum
To power Gaza, the plant needs roughly 600,000 liters of diesel every day. But after October 7, Dr. Maliha is forced to ration his dwindling supply. He shuts off non essential turbines, tries to coordinate emergency imports. But it's all in vain. Two days later, on October 9, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant goes on television saying I have ordered a complete siege on the Gaza Strip. He says there will be no electricity, no food, no fuel. Everything is closed. We are fighting human animals and we act accordingly. The Israeli Energy Minister shuts off the electricity that enters from Israel, leaving only the Gaza power plant to shoulder the burden of powering the lives of over 2 million people.
- [41:23]
Dr. Rafiq Maliha
The crossing is closed. There is no fuel. If there is no fuel, the power plant is stopped. Simply we have only two days storage facility. So if you have no fuel for more than two days, three days, then you immediately shut down.
- [41:40]
Zach Goldbaum
At 2pm on Oct. 11, the power plant's last remaining fuel supply burns off. Some private generators rattle on, but with no fuel entering, those will be next to go. There are also solar panels, but day by day those turn into rubble as well. So as the night falls and 2000 pound M84 bombs rain down from the skies, the Gaza Strip is is blanketed in darkness. One of those munitions hits Dr. Maliha's house.
- [42:22]
Dr. Rafiq Maliha
My house is 400 meters from the shore. It's really for us, it's paradise. And then you discover that your home would shoe build up for 20 years. It's completely destroyed. You have nothing. You start from nothing.
- [42:45]
Zach Goldbaum
In March of last year, Dr. Rafiq Maliha left Gaza and became a refugee in Cairo. Today, almost no fuel enters Gaza. The power lines remain severed, save for one that has intermittently powered a single desalination plant. And the Gaza power plant is still dormant. Once a symbol of Gaza's hopes and dreams, it is now a symbol of powerlessness in every sense of the word. The same is true of the Gaza Marine and the Gaza Gaza project.
- [43:24]
Ariel Ezrahi
To be able to do such projects even through intermediaries, when Hamas was controlling the Gaza Strip and when Israel also had no real long term vision for the resolution of the conflict just doesn't work, doesn't fly.
- [43:41]
Zach Goldbaum
Since this latest war began, the Israeli Energy ministry has granted 12 licenses to six companies to explore for natural gas off the country's Mediterranean coast. The area being explored is in disputed waters, and Palestinians argue that it belongs to them. In recent weeks, a growing number of countries have started to recognize the state of Palestine. If that move is to be anything other than symbolic. The question of how to power Gaza and who is permitted to exploit its land and resources needs to be addressed, because energy undergirds every single aspect of modern life in this war of details and beyond.
- [44:30]
Radha Abdelfattah
Okay, I have headphones for the laptop, and it says at the bottom, recording. So I think it is recording right now. Can you hear me?
- [44:38]
Zach Goldbaum
Well, yeah, that's our producer, Radha Abdelfattah again. A few years ago, she studied in the US As a Fulbright Scholar, and she still remembers experiencing what most of us here take for granted.
- [44:52]
Radha Abdelfattah
One of the things that shocked me is that people have like electricity and power for 24 7.
- [44:58]
Zach Goldbaum
By the way, where's the Internet coming from right now? Like, how are you able to charge your laptop and speak to us right now?
- [45:03]
Radha Abdelfattah
I'm from the lucky people in Gaza because we have a solar panel. But, you know, during the war, it has been broken multiple times. And every time I have to travel to somewhere else to buy that spare part. And usually the spare parts are from other batteries that have been exhausted or destroyed during any incursion.
- [45:24]
Zach Goldbaum
In 2012, there were just a dozen solar panels in Gaza. By 2019, that number had skyrocketed to over 8,000. In fact, for a time, Gaza was believed to have had the highest density of rooftop solar panels in the world. But now much of that infrastructure is destroyed.
- [45:46]
Radha Abdelfattah
I don't know if I told you or not. Few days ago, my house was shelled while we were there. It was at 2:30am in the morning, and it was really dark at night. And all of a sudden, we have heard two loud, consecutive explosions. It was really dark. And the only thing that wasn't dark is the sky because it was full of stars and it was full of also Israeli drones. And I was afraid because I started to smell the debris and I started to see smoke. And I went to the other room. It has my brother, his wife, and his three children, and his youngest child. She was crying at that time, and I just held her. And we started to say, you know, thanks God, that nobody has been injured critically.
- [46:40]
Zach Goldbaum
This is the fourth time in two years that Ghada's house has been shelled. And each time her family does the only thing they can do. Pick up the pieces and rebuild. But day by day, as more of Gaza is destroyed and more lives are lost, there's fewer pieces left. And of everything that's disappeared during this war, one that is especially painful is her family's cherished olive groves.
- [47:08]
Radha Abdelfattah
And all of our olive trees have been destroyed and we try to blend them again with anything just to feed ourselves. And unfortunately none of the crops that we planted have succeeded. We used to have abundance of olive oil and that's why we relied on it and everything. Now all of this have gone.
- [47:30]
Zach Goldbaum
But somehow amid all the carnage, the chronic starvation and the energy insecurity, Gada hasn't given up.
- [47:38]
Radha Abdelfattah
My father is a teacher. My mother, she's also a teacher. But they used to tell us stories about land and the importance of the land. And they keep telling us to take care of the land. And my father says once the war ends and everything is okay, we can't do this again. And like we have done this before, again and again. So we can't do it again and again.
- [48:01]
Zach Goldbaum
Whether it's replanting olive trees or reviving a broken power plant, people like Gada and Dr. Maliha have proven their resourcefulness over and over again.
- [48:12]
Dr. Rafiq Maliha
We are still hoping that we can come back and reoperate the power plant, refix it, and try to help the people who are really suffering in Gaza.
- [48:24]
Zach Goldbaum
But rebuilding may not be the hardest part.
- [48:28]
Dr. Rafiq Maliha
You can at the end find technical solution, but to find political solution, that is the main problem.
- [48:41]
Zach Goldbaum
Foreign Follow Lawless Planet on the Wondry app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to new episodes of Lawless Planet early and ad free right now by joining Wondry plus in the Wondry App, Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Before you go, tell us about yourself by completing a short survey@wondry.com survey on the next episode of Lawless Planet When a team of spies blows up a Greenpeace boat, it sparks international outrage and a frantic search for the attackers. He was a father and was committed to what Greenpeace was doing, but he certainly didn't want to die for it. Special thanks to Ghada Abdul Fattah for helping us produce this episode at great personal risk in Gaza. We'll link to her other reporting from Gaza in the show Notes. If you want to learn more about this story, check out Michael Barron's book the Gaza Marine the Politics and Intrigue Behind Palestine's Untapped Gas Wealth. Lawless Planet is written, produced and hosted by me, Zach Goldbaum, our senior producer and senior story editor is Derek John. Senior producer for Wondry is Andy Herman. Our senior managing producer is Nick Ryan. Our managing producer is Sarah Kenny Corrigan. Our associate producer is Lexi Piri. Sound design by Joe Plord. Music by Kenny Kusiak. Our music supervisor is Scott Velasquez for Farzan Sync Voice acting by Al Wafik Kaur Fact checking by Brian Poonyant. Our legal counsel is Deb Droze. Executive producers are Marshall Louie and Jenny Lauer. Beckman for wondering. Thanks for listening. We'll see you next week. Wonder.