Israel cuts power to more West Bank cities over unpaid bills

Israel's state-owned electric company said Tuesday it cut off power to the West Bank city of Hebron over unpaid bills.

A statement by the Israel Electric Corporation said the power was cut off between 14:00 and 15:00 (1100-1200 GMT.) Residents of Hebron told local media that a cut also occurred at 9:00 (0600 GMT) and lasted about an hour.

The company said the power outage was part of a campaign to press the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) to pay mounting debts due to unpaid electricity bills.

More outages are to follow, with one on Wednesday in the Bethlehem area, and another on Thursday in Ramallah and the PNA's business center, the company said.

It came after similar cuts in Bethlehem district on Monday and in Jericho, in the Jordan Valley, on Sunday.

Local media reported that the cut-off impacted a cancer hospital in Beit Jala, outside Bethlehem, and Bethlehem's Church of Nativity.

Also on Tuesday, The Palestinian East Jerusalem Electric Company, which supplies electricity to about a third of the West Bank, petitioned to Israel's Supreme Court to halt the cuts, the Hebrew Ha'aretz daily reported.

Israel charges that the PNA has a debt of about 1.74 billion shekels (about 460 million U.S. dollars) in unpaid electricity bills.

Palestinians in the West Bank, a territory occupied by Israel in the 1967 Mideast War, are largely dependents on Israel for electricity.

Last year, Israel reduced the supply for the West Bank over the debt. The Palestinians condemn the power cuts as a collective punishment. Endit