GAZA CITY, 12 May 2006 — Petrol stations in the occupied West Bank ran out of petrol after the Israeli company that provides fuel to the Palestinian areas cut off supplies due to growing debt.
The impoverished Gaza Strip was also feeling the crunch over the Palestinian Authority’s failure to pay 120 million shekels ($27 million) owed to Israel’s Dor Alon fuel company. Petrol station owners in the Gaza Strip, where 1.4 million Palestinians live, said supplies were likely to be depleted by the end of the day.
A Palestinian official said President Mahmoud Abbas agreed yesterday to dip into investment funds to end the fuel crisis. Mujahed Salameh, head of the Palestinian Petroleum Agency, said Abbas would send a letter to Dor Alon, pledging payment of 132 million shekels ($29.8 million). “We expect the fuel crisis to be over soon,” Salameh said.
The money would come from the Palestine Investment Fund, the value of which has been estimated by Palestinian officials at close to $1 billion. Abbas took control of it after Hamas won a January parliamentary election.
Salameh did not say how quickly the money could be paid. Dor Alon declined comment.
Salameh said earlier that factories, bakeries and public transport might be forced to stop work unless fuel supplies resumed. Emergency service workers said they feared they would be unable to reach patients in rural areas.
A Palestinian official in Ramallah said the Arab League had told the Palestinian Authority it was unable to transfer tens of millions of dollars in aid which have been collected for people in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
League Secretary-General “Amr Moussa called Mahmoud Abbas today and informed him that the League is not in a position to transfer the money offered by the Arab countries,” Hanna Amireh, a member of the Palestine Liberation Organization executive committee, said. “This is due to the refusal of the banks to transfer the money as a result of American and international pressure.”
The League has gathered $70 million from Qatar and Saudi Arabia to alleviate the plight of residents of the Palestinian territories where government employees have not been paid for the last two months.
However, banks have been unwilling to transfer the money, wary of falling foul of international laws that prohibit the financing of terrorist organizations.
New Israeli Defense Minister Amir Peretz is pushing for a rethink of the government’s blanket boycott of the Palestinian Authority which he fears is only strengthening Hamas. Peretz said the government should instead be looking to build up Abbas at the expense of Hamas, starting by a resumption of negotiations.
— Additional input from agencies
