Tag Archives: Israeli-occupied West Bank

Anger as Palestinian Authority cuts Gaza salaries and pays late

Public servants of the Palestinian Authority queue to receive their salaries outside a bank in Gaza City May 3, 2018. REUTERS/Mohammed Salem

By Nidal al-Mughrabi

GAZA (Reuters) – The Palestinian Authority cut salaries for its staff in Gaza by 20 percent on Thursday and failed to make up for skipping the previous month’s pay, leaving civil servants in the impoverished territory fuming they were pawns in a factional power struggle.

Some 38,000 civil servants in the Gaza Strip learned of the new disruptions to their incomes upon arriving at their banks on payday, intent on withdrawing cash ahead of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which begins on May 16.

Last month, they were not paid at all. Many were hoping for two months pay this month, but instead received a reduced rate of a single month’s pay, with no explanation.

PA salaries in the other Palestinian territory, the Israeli-occupied West Bank, were paid in full.

Islamist group Hamas seized control of Gaza from Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in 2007, prompting Israel and Egypt to clamp down on the territory, where 2 million people live under a de facto blockade with the world’s highest unemployment rate.

In an Egyptian-mediated bid to end the rift and reunite the two Palestinian territories, Hamas said last year it would cede the territory’s control to Abbas’s authority. But many Gazans still feel like they are being used as pawns in a power-struggle between the two groups.

“If they’ve failed to resolve this issue through dialogue, it can’t be resolved by (using) the poor employee,” said Eyad Kalloub, a 40-year-old civil servant, as he queued at his bank.

The Gaza wage cuts were the second round in as many years imposed by the Palestinian Authority, which still administers the payroll for civil servants in the territory run by Hamas.

In April 2017, Abbas slashed Gaza salaries by 30 percent. He has also slashed PA staff numbers in Gaza from 60,000 last year, by ordering early retirement for nearly a third of employees.

Palestinian Authority officials said at time that those moves were meant to pressure Hamas to relinquish Gaza control. However, last month they blamed the latest hold-up in wages on technical problems.

Economists said the PA cuts would shrink the tax revenue collected in Gaza by Hamas – which it uses to pay 40,000 employees it has hired in the enclave since 2007.

That exacerbates Hamas budgetary shortfalls caused by Egypt’s closure of smuggling tunnels from its Sinai peninsula to Gaza. The Islamist faction had collected tax on goods brought in through the tunnels.

More than half of Gazans depend on international aid, and 43.6 percent of workers are unemployed, the highest rate in the world. Basic utilities such as water purification and power have deteriorated.

Israel, which has fought three wars in Gaza in the decade since Hamas took over, bars a range of goods that it says could have military uses from entering the territory, making reconstruction difficult and costly.

Jamal Abu Gholy, 38, a civil servant, came to his Gaza bank hoping to draw on his April salary, only to learn that it had not been deposited. Instead, he owed the bank for an overdraft.

“What shall I do about Ramadan?” he asked, thinking of the festive meals which Muslims break their daily fasting over the course of the month. “I can’t just put out cheese and jam. We tell President Abbas: please show mercy towards us.”

(Editing by Peter Graff)

Suspect in Palestinian assassination attempt among four dead in Gaza shootout: Hamas

Palestinian security forces loyal to Hamas take up positions during an operation to arrest the main suspect in an assassination attempt against Palestinian Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah, in the central Gaza Strip March 22, 2018. REUTERS/Ibraheem Abu Mustafa

By Nidal al-Mughrabi

GAZA (Reuters) – Hamas said its security forces in Gaza shot dead on Thursday the main suspect behind an attempt to assassinate the Palestinian prime minister, a bombing that threatens to unravel its reconciliation agreement with the West Bank-based government.

Two members of the Hamas security forces and one accomplice of the suspect also died in the shootout, the Hamas-led Gaza interior ministry said.

The bombing of Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah’s convoy in Gaza last week dealt another blow to efforts to implement a unity deal between the two main Palestinian factions – Islamist Hamas, which dominates Gaza, and Fatah, the main party in the Palestinian Authority in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

The motorcade Hamdallah and Palestinian security chief Majid Faraj was attacked on March 13 shortly after it entered Gaza from neighboring Israel. They were uninjured.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas had blamed Hamas for the explosion.

After Thursday’s raid, a spokesman for Hamdallah’s government questioned Hamas’s version of events and again accused the group of bearing “full criminal responsibility” for the assassination attempt.

“Once more, Hamas is going along the same path of … fabricating weak stories that make no sense,” the spokesman, Youssef Al-Mahmoud, said.

More than a decade after Hamas fighters drove the Palestinian Authority out of Gaza, Egypt has been brokering a reconciliation deal under which the PA would again assume administrative and security control in the territory of two million people.

Hamdallah has been spearheading those efforts on behalf of the PA, with both sides still divided over how to share power in Gaza, where Hamas is still the strongest armed force.

Abbas has argued that the assassination attempt proved that the agreement was failing and that Hamas could not be trusted.

In a statement, the Hamas-run Interior Ministry in Gaza said its security forces investigating the assassination attempt had surrounded a hideout in the central region of the enclave and came under fire after demanding the suspects surrender.

It said a man named Anas Abu Khoussa, whom it identified as the prime suspect in the bombing, was killed in the ensuing shootout, along with an accomplice and two Hamas security men.

The ministry did not say whether Abu Khoussa was affiliated with any militant group.

Abbas has offered no evidence of the involvement of Hamas in the attempt against Hamdallah’s life. But he said he did not trust Hamas to investigate the incident honestly and that there had been “zero” progress in the reconciliation.

Hamas seized the Gaza Strip from forces loyal to Fatah in 2007.

The Palestinian reconciliation effort is opposed by Israel, which considers Hamas, a group dedicated to its destruction, an implacable foe. U.S.-brokered peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians collapsed in 2014, in part over a unity deal that year between the PA and Hamas, as well as other issues.

(Reporting by Nidal al-Mughrabi; Writing by Jeffrey Heller; Editing by Ori Lewis and Peter Graff)