RAMALLAH(RAHNUMA): Palestinian finance minister Estaphan Salameh on Wednesday floated a slate of proposals to deal with a severe fuel crisis in the occupied West Bank, including the creation of a public petrol company.
For nearly two weeks, scenes of cars lined up at petrol stations have become ubiquitous throughout the West Bank, as stations struggle to provide the three million litres of fuel that the Palestinian territory consumes daily.
AFP journalists have reported Palestinians filling up water bottles in order to get stranded, out-of-gas cars moving again.
Shared taxis, which effectively serve as the West Bank’s public transportation system, have threatened to stop operations altogether.
“What is being proposed is a government-owned company that is fully owned by the state,” Salameh told reporters in Ramallah on Wednesday.
Salameh said he had met with Palestinian industry leaders earlier on Wednesday to discuss reforming the Petroleum Authority, the body currently in charge of regulating the industry as well as purchasing and transporting fuel.
By keeping regulation with the Petroleum Authority and creating a new public company in charge of purchasing and transportation, the government could be more agile in future crises, he said.
The West Bank imports all its oil from Israel, sometimes legally, sometimes smuggled. Israel has occupied the West Bank since 1967.
“There is certainly some smuggling, but we still don’t know its exact scale,” Salameh said, adding that the current fuel crisis had also led to stockpiling and a black market for petrol.
Salameh also said he encouraged Palestinians to pay for gas digitally rather than in cash.
The West Bank lacks a sovereign currency and mostly relies on the Israeli shekel, but in recent months Israel has refused to accept cash from the West Bank, causing companies including those importing fuel to be short on digital money for payments.
The shekel issue is one facet of the financial crisis that the West Bank has faced in recent years.
Another is that Israel has not transferred tax revenues it collects on behalf of the Palestinian Authority, which has not been able to fully pay its civil servants in months.
Palestinian businessman Samir Hullileh said the PA’s fiscal woes were the true reason for the ongoing fuel crisis.
“The government has spent the money of the authority that is responsible for purchasing fuel” and used it for its expenditures, he said.
Hullileh told AFP he did not believe a public petrol company would solve the current fuel crisis or possible future ones.
“The private sector rejected the idea, but there was no public discussion.”
