TULKARM REFUGEE CAMP, West Bank >> Like many Palestinians in this forlorn jumble of concrete buildings, Fakhriya Zeidan labored to recall when she last paid her power bill: maybe in 2001?

"A chicken costs $6. I can’t afford it," Zeidan, 59, said defensively as she rattled a bag of vegetables she had just purchased. "You think I can afford electricity?"

Collectively, the 22,000 residents of the Tulkarm camp in the northern West Bank have amassed $15.2 million in unpaid electric bills over at least 10 years, part of a yawning Palestinian power debt of $430 million that is at the core of the latest breakdown in relations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority.

The system, in which an Israeli company provides electricity while Palestinian officials are supposed to guarantee payments from the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip, is a problem in itself but also emblematic of a broader dysfunction: the Palestinian Authority’s struggle to govern under Israel’s continued occupation and amid deep internal divisions.

The Israelis and the Palestinian Authority cannot agree on the amount of energy consumed, how bills should be calculated or how payments should be collected. Zeidan and her neighbors face neither fines nor service cutoffs, creating the widespread impression that there are no consequences for ignoring the bills. Israel briefly cut power to two Palestinian districts in February, but a large-scale blackout in Palestinian communities would most likely set off a diplomatic crisis.

"The current system doesn’t make sense, especially if we want to build a functioning Palestinian state," said Steen Lau Jorgensen of the World Bank, which has extensively studied the issue of electricity in the region. While Israel tries to offset the mounting power debt by siphoning millions of dollars each month from the taxes it collects on behalf of the Palestinian Authority, Palestinian officials complain of invoices from the Israelis that arrive late or not at all, something Jorgensen described as "a huge issue."

"Imagine," he said, "every month, your grocery store deducts huge amounts from your salary and you are not shown the receipts."

More than two decades after the signing of the Oslo peace accords, which created the Palestinian Authority with the goal of building the backbone of an independent state, the Palestinians continue to rely on Israel for critical utilities, including more than 170 lines that power the West Bank. Palestinian officials say that long-term plans to build two West Bank power stations have been held up but that the first of four high-voltage substations – through which they would at least be able to control the flow of power and easily check how much is being consumed – will be operational by year’s end.

The tussle over electricity recently exploded into an international incident. When Israel announced in late March that, to pay its electric company, it would divert a larger portion of Palestinian tax revenues that it had been withholding since January, President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority refused to accept the remaining money, despite his government’s financial crisis. The two sides brokered a compromise, but the larger issue remains.