Gazans find alternative ways to handle shortage

While an Israeli cutoff in fuel shipments has closed down a dozen of his competitors, baker Khalil Awad stayed in business thanks to a little creativity and dirty black oil drained from car engines.

The cutoff in fuel shipments to the Gaza Strip's sole power plant started a week ago in response to rocket attacks by Palestinian militants. Israel has also banned journalists from entering Gaza, prompting top executives from some of the world's largest media organizations to file a rare protest. Blackouts now last 16 to 20 hours each day, and shortages of kerosene and cooking gas are widespread. While wealthier Gazans have generators and diesel pumped in through contraband tunnels from Egypt, poorer residents have to be inventive.

Many households have run out of cooking gas to make their own bread, so women flocked to Awad's shop on a recent morning with trays of unbaked pita. He gave them numbers to keep the order. A worker shoveled three loaves at a time into the oven with a long wooden paddle.

"We have to eat bread," Awad shrugged. "Somebody has to bake it."

Secret recipe
A handful of salt is Naela's secret recipe to working her old-fashioned brass-bottomed lamp when the power cuts off. She can't find kerosene in the shops, so she pours in diesel instead along with a handful of salt. The salt reduces the smoke and lightens the heavy burning smell. "It's like a doctor's prescription. Works every time," the university student said proudly.

Fuel shortages hit the strip's beloved shwarma shops with a one-two punch. No electricity means the motors won't rotate the spits of spiced, juicy meat, and no gas means no flame to grill it. The fuel shortages forced Ali Asaliya, owner of the al-Waleed Restaurant in the northern Gaza Strip town of Jebaliya, to give up his shwarma endeavor altogether.

He now serves only rice and chicken, kindling a huge wood fire under a cauldron in the street each morning to make the day's food. The change has depressed the once-proud shwarma man. "I feel like I'm 30 percent below zero," Asaliya said.

It's the opposite for Wajih Imbayid, whose ancient bakery runs on wood fire. For 50 years, he has been shuttling bread in and out of his wood oven for people in his impoverished Gaza City neighborhood. But with shortages in cooking gas, housewives are now asking him to cook their already-prepared dinner. On a recent day, Imabyid shoved in chicken dishes and large trays of sweet potatoes alongside the bread. The baker charges a dollar for every dish he bakes, and says the shortages are making him a profit.

"When there's no shortage, you would come and in see me sitting, doing nothing," Imbayid said.

Shopkeeper Khaled Yaziji is also making a tidy profit out of Gaza's latest craze, which began with the blackouts: colorful windproof cigarette lighters that also work as a flashlight.

The "Beacon Windproof Lighters" sell for about a dollar and smuggled in from Egypt through tunnels.Yaziji, 26, said he's sold 10 boxes since the blackouts began. "It's new in the market," Yaziji said. "The boys love them."