As PA plans its return to Gaza, salaries hinder detente
Unpaid salaries of thousands of Hamas employees could ‘detonate’ reconciliation understandings, warns Gaza official
Elhanan Miller is the former Arab affairs reporter for The Times of Israel
As the Palestinian Authority prepares next week to reclaim control over the Gaza Strip, from which it was ousted by Hamas seven years ago, the unpaid salaries of thousands of Hamas employees remain a significant point of contention between Ramallah and Gaza.
Khalil Al-Zayan, a spokesman for Gaza’s Civil Servants Union, told Hamas’s daily Al-Resalah on Monday that he has received “positive promises” that Hamas employees will receive their salaries before the festival of Eid al-Adha, which begins Friday. Ihab Nahhal, a spokesman for Gaza’s public sector employees, told the daily that the salaries could arrive as early as Tuesday.
Hamas has employed some 50,000 men since its bloody takeover of the Gaza Strip in the summer of 2007 — approximately 30,000 civil servants and 20,000 security operatives. The salaries — if paid on time — will go only to the civilian employees, Al-Resalah reported. These would be the first salaries paid to Hamas employees in Gaza since May.
The source of the funds needed for the salaries, estimated at $40 million a month, remains opaque. Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah told journalists on Saturday that the money will not come from the PA budget but rather from a “third country” which he refused to name. Hamdallah’s deputy, Ziad Abu Amr, said that even if the salaries were not paid in full, an advance would arrive before the holiday on Friday.
Qatar has agreed to cover the Hamas salaries, but the United States has prevented Arab Bank from processing the funds. It was unclear whether Qatar remained the “third country” in question.
The crux of the dispute between Hamas and Fatah revolves around the question of whether or not the “comprehensive agreement” reached in Cairo last Thursday includes the immediate payment of Hamas salaries. Gaza-based Hamas leader Salah Bardawil asserted that it does, warning that any delay in payment would serve as “a detonating fuse for the agreement.”
Other Hamas leaders argued that the Cairo understandings were very specific on the status of Hamas’s employees. Political bureau member Izzat Al-Rishq said that a joint Fatah-Hamas committee would discuss integrating the Hamas men into the official PA apparatus, while Gaza-based leader Mahmoud Al-Zahar asserted that the Cairo agreement made no distinction between security and civilian employees.
“Therefore, their salaries should be paid in full along with the salaries of the PA civil servants, with no discrimination,” Zahar told Ma’an news agency on Saturday.
An estimated 70,000 PA employees in Gaza have been receiving their salaries regularly from Ramallah, even though a large proportion of them has been ordered to stay home since 2007 in protest of Hamas’s takeover. In June, Hamas forces blocked PA civil servants from collecting their salaries at Gaza’s banks in a tit-for-tat measure.
But the head of Fatah’s delegation to the reconciliation talks, Azzam Al-Ahmad, said that Hamas was misrepresenting the Cairo understandings. In an interview with Jordanian daily Al-Ghad Monday, Ahmad contended that the issue of Hamas employees would be resolved through a “administrative and legal committee” set up under the Cairo agreement of 2011 and comprising government ministries and advisers from the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) and from Switzerland.
The committee, which operates with no clear timetable, will present its recommendations to the unity government for a decision on the matter, he said, adding that the Palestinian Authority will reassert its full authority over the Gaza Strip “like in the West Bank” immediately after the weekend holiday.
It is therefore money, representing a not-so-subtle power struggle between Hamas and Fatah, that continues to threaten the shaky Palestinian unity.
“Most comments I hear on the Fatah-Hamas understandings say ‘we want actions, not words,'” wrote a somber Izzat al-Rishq on his Facebook page. “People are right. They’ve experienced many agreements but nothing has changed.”
