GAZA, March 20 (Reuters) - The Palestinian Authority will issue tenders next week for a project that aims to sharply increase the amount of electricity Egypt supplies to the Gaza Strip, a Palestinian official said on Thursday. Kanan Abeid, deputy chairman of the Palestinian Energy Authority, said the project's first stage envisages Egypt supplying Gaza with 150 megawatts of electricity starting in 2010. Companies awarded the tenders will lay additional power lines to carry the electricity. The Gaza Strip, which Hamas Islamists seized by force in June after routing Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas's more secular Fatah faction, currently receives 17 megawatts of electricity from Egypt. Israel supplies another 124 megawatts and a power plant in the Gaza Strip produces the remaining 65 megawatts. Israel, which took control of the Gaza Strip in the 1967 Middle East war, withdrew troops and settlers from the territory in 2005. The Jewish state still controls Gaza's northern and eastern borders as well as its airspace and coastal waters. Abeid said the additional electricity supplied by Egypt would not allow Israel to disconnect itself from Gaza because of increased demand. "In 2010, the Gaza Strip's power needs will be 300 megawatts, therefore, we would still have to take from Israel," Abeid said. An Israeli official said the project was moving forward with Israel's support. Israel tightened its economic blockade of the Gaza Strip after Hamas's takeover in June and briefly cut fuel supplies earlier this year, citing a surge in cross-border rocket fire by militants in the territory. (Reporting by Nidal al-Mughrabi and Avida Landau; Writing by Avida Landau; Editing by Charles Dick)
The son of Palestinian farmer Hussein Abu Abed mourns beside his father's body in the southern Gaza Strip March 20, 2008. Israeli troops killed a Palestinian farmer in the Gaza Strip ...
