Lights Out in — and for — Gaza?

This prompts a question: Why were the lights still on at all in Gaza? Gazans chose Hamas as their government and have never indicated they would choose otherwise in the 19 years since. Hamas runs all of the institutions, and controls all the resources and people. When Hamas launched their war with massive genocidal atrocities on October 7, Gazans celebrated as though they had already won the war — and keep attending Hamas rallies in droves. 

The news yesterday is less that Israel is flexing its muscle by cutting off electricity to Gaza, but that they had been supplying it to their enemies for the past eighteen months at all:

Energy Minister Eli Cohen on Sunday instructed the Israel Electric Corporation to immediately cut off the supply of electricity to the Gaza Strip, in an apparent bid to pile pressure on the enclave, where 24 hostages presumed to be alive, and the bodies of 35 more, are still held.

“We will employ all the tools available to us so that all the hostages will return, and we will ensure that Hamas won’t be in Gaza on the ‘day after,’” said Cohen in a short video statement.

As it turns out, though, the Israelis aren’t that suicidally generous. Most of the electricity got cut off in the immediate aftermath of October 7. However, the Israelis were persuaded to restore service to a particularly critical part of Gaza’s infrastructure shortly after the war began:

However, an Israeli official told The Times of Israel that Cohen’s decision is less dramatic that he made it appear. Electricity from Israel to Gaza was cut off after October 7, but in November Israel announced it was renewing supply to a desalination plant near Deir el-Balah in central Gaza. Israel cut the power to that plant, said the official.

The plant serves more than 600,000 Gaza residents through tankers or the networks of Deir el-Balah and Khan Younis governorates in central and southern Gaza, respectively. It is one of three such seawater processing facilities in the Gaza Strip, which before the war met around 15 percent of the 2 million-plus residents’ need for water.

Is that really less dramatic? It may not be an energy crisis, but now it’s a water crisis. And Gazans can struggle through the former much longer than they can the latter, especially while Israel halts aid deliveries that include potable water. 

That announcement came last week, and it drew a lot of criticism from Western countries, although the Trump administration supported the move. The same argument applies, however, to the aid deliveries. Israel is not obligated to provide aid to a population that launched war against it, not even just by facilitating the deliveries from third parties. No other country has ever been obligated by any rules of war to provide support in such a situation, excepting an occupation in which the population has capitulated rather than continuing to fight. 

Having one’s government start a war has consequences, especially when your side can’t win an all-out war. Among the consequences is the disruption of trade with that enemy, along with that enemy’s allies and/or unengaged nations that don’t wish to enter the war. If the Gazans want electricity, food, and water, then they’d better start figuring out how to get it themselves or capitulate to the Israelis and negotiate the surrender of their government. 

This is why starting wars is bad. It’s especially why starting wars by massacres of civilians, widespread rapes of women and children, and kidnapping women and babies makes the situation even worse. Gazans launched a war of annihilation against Israel while expecting to suffer no commensurate risk of complete destruction themselves, a fantasy perpetuated by the same Western nations that now cluck their tongues at Israel’s refusal to play along with their own destruction. The only way to end this was is for the disincentives for conflict to be clearly, consistently, and completely applied so as to leave no doubt that wars of national destruction can mean losing everything for those who start them. 

The Israelis are slowly dialing up those consequences now. Gazans have a choice between Hamas and survival. If they keep choosing Hamas, don’t blame Israel for finishing the war that the Gazans and their government keep trying to start by violating ten cease-fires over the past 19 years. The lights may be out in Gaza, but Gazans still can choose whether the lights will go out for Gaza.