On most days, Sael Jabareen drives from his home in Ramallah to work at the office of the Israeli-Palestinian peace organization Combatants for Peace in Beit Jala, near Bethlehem, some 30 kilometers (19 miles) away.

But for the past two weeks, he has been unable to make the trip. He simply has no gas.

Across the West Bank, fuel gauges on Palestinian cars have recently been stubbornly stuck on empty as the territory grapples with an acute shortage of gasoline.

“The West Bank is completely paralyzed because of this,” said Sameh al-Atout, an economist at An-Najah National University in Nablus.

Driving the shortage is a cash crunch that has left fuel-sellers short of the money needed to purchase imported gasoline, possibly compounded by higher energy prices worldwide and panic buying by skittish consumers.

Experts say deeper structural issues are also at play, including the Palestinian economy’s reliance on Israeli currency and its restricted access to banking services, as well as the Palestinian Authority’s monopoly on fuel imports, leading to calls for far-reaching reforms.

Palestinian media outlets began reporting on severe shortages at gas stations across the West Bank on July 16. Since then, long lines have become a common sight, with residents describing fraying tempers and major disruptions to daily life.

“You drive past the stations and they’re all packed with lines. From morning until night, all you see are lines. Twice already my wife and I waited in line at a gas station, and after an hour to an hour and a half, the station ran out of fuel before we could fill up. And there’s no answer as to why this is happening,” Jabareen told The Times of Israel.

Among those hit hardest are operators of taxis and shared-taxi vans, who provide the only form of public transportation in the West Bank.

A taxi driver from the Nablus area, who requested The Times of Israel not use his name, said he had stopped operating altogether since the shortages began.

Alaa Mayas, head of the General Union of Transport Workers in Palestine, warned on July 26 that the prolonged shortage was threatening the entire transportation sector.

The PA only addressed the issues behind the problem for the first time on Wednesday, with Palestinian Finance Minister Estephan Salameh attributing the shortage to several economic crises, chief among them the ongoing cash liquidity crisis involving Israeli banks.

Multiple economic crises create shortage

Almost all of the 3 million liters of fuel consumed in the West Bank daily is bought by the Palestinian General Petroleum Authority from Israeli fuel companies before being distributed to licensed Palestinian gas stations.

Under Palestinian law, the Petroleum Authority holds a monopoly over fuel imports into the West Bank, making it the sole entity authorized to purchase and import fuel.

The shortages come amid broader turbulence in global energy markets. In recent months, disruptions to oil shipments through the Strait of Hormuz, sparked by the war in Iran, have pushed global oil prices higher.

However, Israel has not experienced fuel shortages in recent weeks, suggesting that the crisis in the West Bank is rooted primarily in local economic constraints rather than global supply disruptions.

For over a year, the Palestinian economy has been hampered by a cash crisis rooted in the economic arrangements established under the 1994 Paris Protocol, the economic annex to the Oslo Accords.

Under those arrangements, the Palestinians do not have a national currency and instead use the Israeli shekel. Palestinian banks, therefore, rely on the Israeli banking system to clear and exchange shekels into foreign currencies.

Although the Palestinian economy has grown significantly over the past three decades, the........

© The Times of Israel