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Cash problems plague Hamas government

DPA, TEL AVIV AND GAZA
Sunday, Apr 09, 2006, Page 9

"The salaries we get from the Palestinian Authority are our only income."

Khaled Abu Shaban. a 34-year-old civil sevant in Gaza City

The 24 ministers of the new Palestinian government led by the militant Islamic Hamas movement are starting their jobs with empty coffers. Thousands of civil servants and members of the Palestinian security forces are waiting impatiently for their salaries.

Meanwhile, since its unexpected defeat in the Jan. 25 parliamentary elections, the Fatah party of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas waits on the sidelines for Hamas to fail.

For the past more than two months, Hamas leaders have been traveling to neighboring Arab countries pleading for financial assistance. Despite pledges of support, the money has yet to arrive.

The monthly salaries of the Palestinian Authority's 140,000 civil servants and members of the security forces total around US$120 million.

At the Arab League summit in Khartoum last week, Hamas had asked for US$170 million support per month. Conference participants promised US$50 million, a sum Palestinian Prime Minister Ismael Haneya said was "far from enough to solve the crisis."

The suspension of direct aid from the US and EU, as well as Israel's refusal to transfer more than US$50 million a month in custom duties which it collects on behalf of the authority, leave a huge hole in the budget.

"The salaries we get from the Palestinian Authority are our only income," said Khaled Abu Shaban, a 34-year-old civil servant in Gaza City on Thursday. "We don't have any other sources for making a living."

Hamas' cash problem has also made it unable thus far to pay the monthly stipend the Ministry of Prisoners Affairs gives the families of militants jailed in Israel.

"Liars," fumed Rafiq Hamdouna, the head of the Palestinian Prisoners Association, referring to a repeated promise by the Hamas leadership to pay the March allowance "within the next two days."

Hamas has made the prisoners issue a top priority and the difficulty it faces in continuing support to their families is another example of the problems it will have to keep its election promises and meet the expectations of its voters.

Meanwhile in Ramallah, Abbas is seeking to keep more and more authority in his own hands and restore powers to the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), in an attempt to partially bypass the Hamas government and overcome the authority's isolation.

On Wednesday night, he signed a presidential decree bringing the Palestinian border crossings under his control. Officials close to him justified the move by saying the EU threatened to withdraw its monitors from the key Rafah crossing between Gaza and Egypt in response to Hamas assuming power.

Abbas has also halted a long-promised reform of the security forces -- demanded by the EU and US three years ago but never fully implemented -- which would have brought them all under a single umbrella and under the jurisdiction of the interior minister.

Outgoing Interior Minister Nasser Yousef, a Fatah member, stressed last week that the bulk of the security organizations, including the largest one, the National Security, would remain under the authority of the president. Only the police and several smaller ones which were already under the authority of the interior minister would remain so.

Abbas is also trying to revive the PLO's Political Department headed by Fatah official Farouk Kadoumi, which would then deal with foreign affairs, sources in Fatah say.

Hamas has appointed Mahmoud al-Zahar, considered a radical in the movement, as its foreign minister.

Abbas, elected president a year before the legislative elections, may also want to revive the PLO's National Fund, as an alternative address for financial support, they say.

Although Israel has refused to revive peace talks unless Hamas recognize the Jewish state and renounce violence, the 71-year-old president has also called for talks through the PLO's Negotiations Department, pointing out that it was the PLO which signed the 1993 interim Oslo accords with Israel.

Hamas, however, has refused demands by Abbas and Fatah that it recognize the PLO as the "sole representative of the Palestinian people."

Some analysts say the moves by Abbas to transfer powers to the PLO and his own office go so far as to indicate the establishment of a parallel government.
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