The New Nation - Internet Edition

AP, Gaza City

While an Israeli cutoff in fuel shipments has closed down a dozen of his competitors, baker Khalil Awad stays 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 shrugs. "Somebody has to bake it."

A handful of salt is 23-year-old 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 says proudly.

The dirty laundry is a more difficult task. Naela has to rush to work the washing machine when the electricity blinks on, often at 11 p.m. She sometimes hangs laundry until 2 a.m.

And there isn't much she can do about missing out on her favorite dubbed-over Turkish soap operas.

"If I don't have studies, I just go to sleep. There's nothing else to do during a blackout," Naela says.

Two hairdressers work furiously tugging and blow-drying the hair of a young bride and her mother. The generator in Victoria Shaer's salon is making a banging noise, and they have to finish before the fuel runs out.