The conflict between Israelis and the Palestinians has continued to fester over time with occupation, the expansion of Israeli settlements on Palestinian land and with recent reports that the Israeli government has reduced power to the Gaza strip. It was reported by various media outlets that a rocket was fired from Gaza into an open area in Israel on Monday. In an article by the Washington Post titled: "Gaza is running perilously short of power. This time, it’s not all Israel’s fault," the news outlet said that people of Gaza have been suffering through the summer heat while the Israel government has been cutting off electricity to the people of Gaza from their power grid.

Abbas vs. Hamas

People are reportedly only able to have electricity for up to four hours a day. This is not long enough for them to keep their mobile phones or their car batteries charged. The car batteries are used to power light bulbs at night. The Washington Post article referred those who blamed the Gaza strip power outages on the Israeli government but it further points out that their frequent outages are more of a result of a political brawl between Hamas and the Palestinian Authority (PA) in the West Bank.

Back in April, it was reported that the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank -- which is led by Mahmoud Abbas, would stop paying Israel for electricity in order to put pressure on Hamas.

Perhaps this move was a sign that Abbas was trying to look tougher against the militant governing force. There are two million people who reside in Gaza. They do have a power station but it has been out of commission since April. Apparently, they even had problems with power outages when it was online.

Exploiting the anti-Israel narrative

For this reason, the people of Gaza have had to rely on the Israelis for electricity but now they're receiving help from Egypt to get their power station up and running. Over the past several days, Egypt has been sending in fuel on trucks for their power generators but only enough to keep them running for a couple of days at a time.

The conflict also involves Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Qatar which provided funding to the Gaza strip. The Israeli government did not immediately cut power to Gaza when Abbas told them he would no longer be paying for it as the Israelis were hoping that by stalling they could entice external governments to step in and help.

In the New York Times' report on the PA's lack of payment, it referred to the views of Mkhaimar Abusada, a political scientist at al-Azhar University in Gaza. He said that Abbas knew that through non-payment Palestinians would end up blaming the Israeli government.

The conflict between Palestinians and Israel continues to drive Hamas to view Israel as the enemy and, therefore, has kept the violence at an all time high. The previously mentioned rocket is just one of many such instances. It's also likely that the rocket attack is an early sign of more violence breaking out between Israel and Gaza, again.
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