GAZA CITY, Gaza – When Ahmed Ashour finished high school two years ago he knew where his future lay. He decided to not apply to any university, even though his family could easily afford it, and instead went in to the business of selling and servicing small electric generators.

“What do I need a degree for? I found work right after school and I make very good money,” Ashour, 20, told The Media Line. “I have my own motorbike and I can afford to get married anytime I see fit. University graduates are struggling to find any job these days – they’re willing to settle for anything. By the time any of them can find a job, I’ll have my own business.”

Generators for everything from shanties to hospitals are a big industry in the Gaza Strip, where power outages are the norm and can run anywhere from a couple of hours, to brownouts of 18 or 20 hours, or even drag on for days. Usually it is troubles with Israel that are behind the shortfall for Gaza’s sole generating plant, but this time around it is Egypt.

Electricity was always unreliable in Gaza, but having your own private generator had been a luxury that only the wealthiest could indulge in. That changed after Israel imposed a blockade in the enclave back in 2007 and outages became so routine that a generator became a household necessity. Thanks to cheap Chinese products, Gazans of all classes can afford one – if they can find the fuel to run it.

Facing its own fuel shortages and struggling to exercise its authority in the chaotic Sinai Peninsula next door to Gaza, Egypt has been cracking down on fuel smugglers and is demanding that the energy trade with Gaza be legal and aboveboard.

Egypt’s stance has angered Gazans. A group of them staged a sit-in in front of the shuttered Egyptian Embassy on Sunday. Ismael Haniyeh, prime minister of Gaza’s Hamas government, announced during Friday’s prayers last week, said he would not bend to Egypt’s insistence that energy be delivered via Israel’s Kerem Shalom crossing. He said the prices Cairo is demanding are exorbitant.

In principle the two sides have an agreement on resuming supplies, but as of Tuesday the terms of the deal remained murky. Meanwhile, public hospitals are running generators on emergency fuel supplied by the Red Cross. Ali Hayek, head of the Federation of Palestinian Industries, warned this week that factories would be forced to close down.

But Ashour is busier than ever these days.

Polite and shy and with a baby face, he looks like he is 16. But when he gets to work he becomes a cool professional, adept with his hands and deeply knowledgeable about the intricacies of the generator. It takes him only two or three minutes to diagnose a problem and no more than 10 minutes to fix it.

“We get scores of generators that need to be fixed each day. Electricity goes out more than 16 hours a day so people don’t want to wait. I have to be fast and efficient -- it’s not a problem for me,” Ashour said while he tinkered with a generator. His hands rapidly turned black because of the oil that powers them.

Scores of shops across Gaza sell generators. Ashour’s family owns and operates a chain across Gaza that has gradually come to specialize in generators as demand as grown. That is where he learned the business.

Most of the generators are made in China and smuggled to Gaza from Egypt through the same network of tunnels that supply black market fuel. The price of generators has fallen over the past two years, so a small Chinese make goes for around 400 shekels ($105) and a medium-sized one for around 800 to 1000 shekels.

“It’s cheap, but it also dies earlier,” Ashour said about the Chinese product. “It’s dangerous, too. It might cause a fire if the generator operates more than 12 hours a day. But people resort to Chinese generators because they are cheap and affordable, despite the numerous stories they hear about deaths and injuries in Gaza they have caused.”

The generator that Ashour was working on belongs to Abu Omar Ansari, 56, who works as a watchman for a non-government organization in Gaza. Rather than leave it at the shop to be serviced, Ansari waited patiently while Ashour worked on it. “My wife told me not to come home if I don’t have the fixed generator with me. We go 16 hours without electricity every day, It makes life unbearable,” he explained.

But if generators are widely available, the fuel to power them is not. Power-hungry Gazans have to make the rounds to local filling stations and when they find fuel, they often have to wait on line to get it. Buying on the black market is costly.

“They will sell you the regular fuel at the price of the Super, which is the best quality in Gaza,” Ansari told The Media Line. “I can’t afford to buy at such a ridiculous price. How can I pay four shekels a liter when I need about 100 to120 liters a month just to run the generator for six hours a day?”

But when the repair is done, Ansari doesn’t hesitate to heave up the machine into his arms for the journey home. “Look at me, I’m an old man, I wear eyeglasses, I can’t see and walk freely in the dark. It’s hard for me to carry the generator back and forth, but life is even harder without fixing the generator,” he said as he struggles with the device. “No one can live without a generator in Gaza, especially nowadays.”