Acronyms can do a disservice. Now that I live on the East Coast and am removed from my old political science stomping grounds of Middle Eastern affairs, PA means Pennsylvania. But to me, it's the Palestinian Authority.

There are clearly significant disparities between the two. Language, culture, immediate threat of military conflict... Children in Scranton don't stumble upon mortar shells. But alas, in this world of lowest common denominators, Pennsylvanians and Palestinians share a common burden of dwindling gasoline supplies.

Again, though, the difference is huge.

While Pittsburgh pumpers sweat bullets over 3 bucks a gallon, Ramallah refillers dodge bullets while waiting in line for dry tanks that may sputter.

Yesterday, Dor-Alon Energy, Israel's exclusive gasoline and cooking gas supplier to the Palestinian territories of the West Bank and Gaza, turned off the spigot.

Since the now-defunct peace deals brokered in the mid-1990s, Dor-Alon Energy has provided the Palestinian National Authority with its vehicular and household fuel.

Though only 1/3 of Dor-Alon's business comes from its sales to the Palestinian government, the company holds a monopoly on petrol inflows to the PA. So when a check for 100 million shekels ($22 million) bounced in February, the supplier cut off the juice for four days.

After EU payment on the PA's behalf, that situation was remedied. But this time around, with $27 million owed amid mounting international pressure on the Hamas-led Palestinian government, Dor resumed its blockage.

Today (Thursday), the head of the Palestinian Petroleum Agency told the BBC that another total cutoff had been averted, but not before pumps went bone-bare in many locales.

Volatile Gases

The Palestinian-Israeli conflict and, by extension, the Arab-Israeli conflict are disproportionately well known among the world's feuds. This is due in no small part to the theatre of battle, the Holy Land for the three abrahamitic faiths.

Aside from being a flashpoint for religious and nationalistic tensions among those who contend for the status of God's most blessed, the Eastern Mediterranean is poorly endowed with the hydrocarbons that have made life easy and taxes low for many Middle Easterners.

Off and on, the energy situation has appeared brighter for the countries of the southern Levant (as the region from Turkey to Gaza is known).

In September of 2000, Palestinian President Yasser Arafat stood on the bow of a small fishing vessel about 22 miles off the Gaza coast and yelled "Start!" A flame shot into the air, signaling the presence of undersea natural gas at a site scouted by British Gas.

"It's a gift from God to us, to our people, to our children, " Arafat proclaimed with a smile. "This will provide a solid foundation for our economy, for establishing an independent state with holy Jerusalem as its capital."

This was just after my first trip to Israel, and immediately following the Camp David talks of 2000 that precipitated the end of the nineties' peace process.

The Al-Aqsa Intifada began in October 2000 and, understandably, exploration off the Gaza coast has ground almost entirely to a halt, and certainly none of it is taking place under the Palestinian Authority's remaining, well, authority.

Welcome to Singapoor

Even after the Israeli evacuation of Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip, evoking dreams of an Arab Singapore in the land of the seafaring ancient Phoenicians, most economic activity has stagnated and turned the potential Mediterranean city-state into little more than an island of militant activity and supply shortages.

It is estimated that the Gaza Marine-1 field contains about 60 billion cubic meters of natural gas, and British Gas planned to spend $500 million on exploration and development of the resource, with the possibility of a pipeline to the Israeli port of Ashkelon and Egyptian destinations.

This gas could ease the plight of many normal Palestinians who, ironically, voted for Hamas based on some political but mostly pragmatic grounds.

Hamas' local reputation over the years has juxtaposed the militant Islamic group with the secular Fatah movement, who ran the PA with rampant corruption and a chaotic security apparatus while the Hamas ended up keeping many refugee camps and others fed through foreign financing and efficient leadership.

These days, international isolation has torpedoed Hamas' promises of provision, leaving 165,000 government workers without salaries and today's scenes of ambulances and hospitals without the wherewithal to administer assistance.

Fuel poverty is indeed the most significant sort of want in these days of import and export, especially where localized agriculture is sparse.

Since Hamas won the Palestinian national legislative elections on January 25, many in Fatah and outside the PA have called for a softening of the party's hard-line stance on Israel, especially regarding the Jewish state's right to exist and the use of violence to achieve irredentist aims.

But the world cannot, and will not, let the Hamas-led government drown in a fuel-less abyss. The very news coverage that brings this New Jersey-sized spot of land under the world's microscope implies stopgap measures, such as the "temporary international mechanism" the US and EU are creating to deliver aid directly to the Palestinian people.

Whether this can be done without a Hamas fingerprint is doubtful since, after all, Hamas is the only party many Palestinians trust to administer daily affairs.

One Palestinian driver in the West Bank said yesterday that he would go to a nearby Jewish settlement to procure his petrol. "If they kill me I will be a martyr of gas," he said wryly.

There are many gas martyrs in this world, many unnecessarily.

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