Palestinians’ Unpaid Electric Bills in the West Bank Thicken Tension With Israel
Version 0 of 1. TULKARM REFUGEE CAMP, West Bank — Like many Palestinians in this forlorn jumble of concrete buildings, Fakhriya Zeidan labored to recall when she last paid her power bill: maybe in 2001? “A chicken costs $6. I can’t afford it,” Ms. Zeidan, 59, said defensively as she rattled a bag of vegetables she had just purchased. “You think I can afford electricity?” Collectively, the 22,000 residents of the Tulkarm camp in the northern West Bank have amassed $15.2 million in unpaid electric bills over at least 10 years, part of a yawning Palestinian power debt of $430 million that is at the core of the latest breakdown in relations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. The system, in which an Israeli company provides electricity and Palestinian officials are supposed to guarantee payments from the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip, is a problem in itself but also emblematic of a broader dysfunction: the Palestinian Authority’s struggle to govern under Israel’s continued occupation and amid deep internal divisions. The Israelis and the Palestinian Authority cannot agree on the amount of energy consumed, how bills should be calculated or how payments should be collected. Ms. Zeidan and her neighbors face neither fines nor service cutoffs, creating the widespread impression that there are no consequences for ignoring the bills. Israel briefly cut power to two Palestinian districts in February, but a large-scale blackout in Palestinian communities would most likely set off a diplomatic crisis. “The current system doesn’t make sense, especially if we want to build a functioning Palestinian state,” said Steen Lau Jorgensen of the World Bank, which has extensively studied the issue of electricity in the region. While Israel tries to offset the mounting power debt by siphoning millions of dollars each month from the taxes it collects on behalf of the Palestinian Authority, Palestinian officials complain of invoices from the Israelis that arrive late or not at all, something Mr. Jorgensen described as “a huge issue.” “Imagine,” he said, “every month, your grocery store deducts huge amounts from your salary and you are not shown the receipts.” More than two decades after the signing of the Oslo peace accords, which created the Palestinian Authority with the goal of building the backbone of an independent state, the Palestinians continue to rely on Israel for critical utilities, including more than 170 lines that power the West Bank. Palestinian officials say that long-term plans to build two West Bank power stations have been held up but that the first of four high-voltage substations — through which they would at least be able to control the flow of power and easily check how much is being consumed — will be operational by year’s end. The tussle over electricity recently exploded into an international incident. When Israel announced in late March that, to pay its electric company, it would divert a larger portion of Palestinian tax revenue that it had been withholding since January, President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority refused to accept the remaining money, despite his government’s financial crisis. The two sides brokered a compromise, but the larger issue remains. The World Bank estimated in November that Palestinians had failed to pay for 58 percent of the power they used in 2013, up from 37 percent in 2010. About 40 percent of the power debt is from Gaza, where Hamas, the militant Islamist Palestinian political faction, has ruled since 2007. The World Bank says that Hamas collects payments from Gaza’s 1.8 million residents but refuses to hand the money over to the Palestinian Authority because of its rivalry with Mr. Abbas and his Fatah party. A quarter of the debt, according to the World Bank, comes from the customers of the Jerusalem District Electricity Company, which serves East Jerusalem and nearby areas of the West Bank. Jerusalem’s 300,000 Palestinians live in something of a limbo. Israel annexed their neighborhoods after capturing them, along with the West Bank, during the 1967 war, and gave them residency rights. They were also offered citizenship, but most refuse to become Israelis, seeing themselves as Palestinians living under occupation, and belonging to a future Palestinian state. The Jerusalem company resells power from Israel to Palestinian neighborhoods in East Jerusalem and to parts of the West Bank, including the centers of the cities of Ramallah and Bethlehem, but it is unclear who is supposed to collect payments. Zafer Milhem, deputy director of the Palestinian Energy Authority, said it was not his agency’s responsibility because the company was registered in Israel and because East Jerusalem was under the control of the Israeli authorities. Elsewhere in the West Bank, the Israel Electric Corporation sells power to Palestinian municipalities and distribution companies, but, Mr. Milhem said, Israel holds the Palestinian Authority broadly responsible for payment. The World Bank found that some municipalities collected customers’ payments but used them to offset general expenses rather than passing them on to the Israelis. Mr. Milhem said his agency had recently begun conducting municipal audits and cracking down on the companies. But he said the agency was unable even to determine how much Palestinians owed because many meters were in areas where Israel forbids Palestinian officials to work, something that Galit Globus, a lawyer for Israel Electric, denied. The greatest scofflaws are the residents of refugee camps like Tulkarm, where Fisal Sallameh, a local leader, said a 2012 effort to settle the debts failed. Residents of the camp are too poor to pay, Mr. Sallameh said, and they see electricity as the responsibility of the Palestinian Authority, which the refugees widely despise. “Let those dirt bags pay for us” is a common refrain, he said. For more than a decade, the Palestinian Authority has essentially been paying at least part of the bills, as Israel deducts $12 million to $17 million from each month’s tax transfer of more than $100 million to pay down the electric debt. Mr. Milhem said there was an informal procedure in which the Palestinians were told how much was being subtracted and why. After a standoff over three months of tax payments, which Israel originally withheld as punishment for the Palestinians’ joining the International Criminal Court, Mr. Abbas agreed to accept the transfer minus $30 million. But the conflict continues, including a dispute over price. The World Bank says Palestinians pay the region’s highest tariffs for power after Israel, as well as a value-added tax. They have been sporadically negotiating for years to be treated as an export market rather than as Israeli customers. But they have little leverage because they lack their own power infrastructure, and neighboring Jordan and Egypt do not have enough power to sell large amounts. The Palestinians’ plan to build two West Bank power plants has stalled over their request for guarantees from Israel that the plants will be able to use natural gas and that they will not be destroyed, Mr. Milhem said. Gaza’s lone plant was twice bombed by Israel, in 2006 and 2014, and has had to use more expensive fuels because Israel blocks the import of natural gas. “I’m not optimistic of reaching a deal with the Israelis for electricity without solving the whole thing: We have to reach a peace agreement that gives us the right over our land, that gives us the right to have our own state, with its facilities and services, and to have our own resources,” Mr. Milhem said. “They treat us like a consumer in Israel, and it’s not like that,” he said. “It’s something that should be governed between two states, with clear obligations and rights.” That is beyond the authority of Ms. Globus, the Israeli lawyer, who simply sees the bills stacking up. “Somebody has to pay for the electricity,” she said. “We are an electricity company. We sell electricity, and we don’t receive the money. And it’s a lot of money.” |