Economic affairs specialist Ahmed Abu Qamar:

▪ The occupation’s years-long ban on importing alternative energy supplies, cables, and batteries, contrary to understandings, has caused a shortage of supply مقابل a sharp rise in demand.

▪ The record rise in prices is explained economically by the supply-and-demand mechanism, as the scarcity of goods and the increase in the need for them lead to their value doubling and to their exploitation by some merchants.

▪ Energy is considered a strategic service that drives any economy, and its availability and prices largely determine the prices of other goods and services because of its direct overlap in production processes and daily uses.

▪ The disruption of the electricity company’s work and the destruction of Gaza’s main energy sources since the start of the war pushed citizens to search for available alternatives such as solar panels and batteries to secure the minimum of their living needs.

▪ The ban on alternative energy materials is not limited to preventing a specific commodity, but deprives citizens of a vital material that could have alleviated the economic and service crisis.

▪ The rise in the cost of one kilowatt of operational electricity to many times its normal pre-war price has been directly reflected in the prices of basic products and services, placing additional financial burdens on the exhausted consumer.

▪ Getting out of this cycle requires the immediate entry of fuel, generators, and alternative energy supplies as basic humanitarian needs, along with the reoperation of the main power plant to break the state of monopoly and reduce high prices.