GAZA, (PIC)
Reaching work is no longer a routine matter for Mahmoud Juhjouh, 35, who has been forced over the past months to walk daily from the center of Khan Yunis to the Al-Mawasi area, escaping high transportation costs and the lack of “small change” with drivers.
Juhjouh says that his limited income is no longer enough to cover transportation fares, amid living conditions that grow more severe day by day.
Daily burdens
The suffering of Juhjouh is no different from the reality of thousands of citizens in the Gaza Strip, where the significant rise in fuel prices has doubled the burdens of daily life, especially with the spread of unemployment and poverty.
Citizens confirm that transportation has turned into a daily burden that exhausts what remains of their income, in the absence of any tangible solutions.
For his part, driver Shadi Hamdan describes fuel prices as “insane,” explaining that the price of a liter of diesel has reached about 36 shekels, while gasoline reached nearly 80 shekels.
He adds that his vehicle consumes more than one liter per trip, which forced him to double the transportation fare, in addition to increasing the number of passengers to cover costs.
He points out that the rise in prices of oils and spare parts exacerbated the crisis, saying, “These are all factors that forced us to raise the tariff.”
The weakest link
In contrast, citizens believe that these justifications do not ease their suffering, emphasizing that they are the weakest link in light of this complex crisis, in which complicated economic and humanitarian factors overlap.
In a related context, Mohammad Hamad, an administrator at a fuel station, confirms that the main reason for the crisis is the reduction in fuel quantities entering the Gaza Strip, explaining that fuel has not been brought into the commercial sector since the start of the war in October 2023, and has been limited to small quantities designated for vital sectors.
Hamad adds that the quantities that entered at the beginning of the crisis ranged between 300,000 to 400,000 liters per week, which were barely enough to operate hospitals and ambulances, before later rising to about 2,000,000 liters per week, which allowed for expanding distribution to include some service sectors.
He noted that the truce period at the beginning of 2025 witnessed a noticeable improvement, as quantities reached about 1,000,000 liters per day, which was reflected in prices that dropped then to between 18 and 20 shekels per liter, but this improvement did not last long, with the return and tightening of restrictions recently.
Hamad emphasizes that the fuel needs of the Gaza Strip were about 6,000,000 liters per week before the war, but they have now doubled as a result of the reliance on electric generators, in light of the power plant shutdown, which increased the severity of the crisis.
For its part, the Petroleum Authority in Gaza announced that it is making efforts to limit the black market and ensure the fair distribution of fuel, stressing that the core of the problem lies in the scarcity of incoming quantities compared to the volume of increasing demand.