Qatari official said to arrive in Gaza to deliver cash payments
100,000 Palestinian families set to receive $100 monthly stipend from Doha, which Israel permits as part of quiet efforts to stabilize restive Strip
A Qatari envoy reportedly arrived in the Gaza Strip overnight Thursday-Friday to distribute another round of cash payments to 100,000 Palestinian families in the enclave.
It is the latest in a succession of financial aid delivered by Qatari envoy Mohammed al-Emadi meant to cover fuel for electricity, salaries and assistance for needy families in the Strip from Qatar, which has budgeted some $330 million for the program launched last year.
The individual $100 stipends will be handed out on Friday, reports said.
Qatar announced on May 6 that it would send $480 million to the West Bank and Gaza to “aid the brotherly Palestinian people in obtaining its basic needs.” PA officials later said that Doha would deliver $300 million, primarily in loans, to Ramallah’s accounts and $180 million to Gaza.
In recent months, Israel has quietly provided some relief as part of an unofficial, Egyptian-brokered truce with Hamas, in exchange for reduced rocket fire from the territory and the scaling back of weekly protests along the border. It has allowed Qatar to deliver millions of dollars in cash to allow Hamas to pay its civil servants and has allowed the United Nations to step up aid efforts.
Israel has also expanded a program in which it had long provided hundreds of permits to business owners to travel to Israel and the West Bank for commerce. Palestinian officials say it is now providing some 5,000 so-called merchant permits and awarding them to Palestinians working as laborers in construction, agriculture and manufacturing.
Earlier this week, a Palestinian Authority official said Israel has promised to allow a shipment of tires into the Gaza Strip, but an Israeli security source flatly denied the claim, calling it a “lie.”
Israel often has to contend with sporadic rocket fire and border breaches from the Gaza Strip. Since March 2018, Palestinians have also been holding weekly “March of Return” protests on the border, which Israel has accused Gaza’s Hamas rulers of using to carry out attacks on troops and attempt to breach the security fence.
Hamas, an Islamist terror group that seeks to destroy Israel, seized control of Gaza in 2007 in a violent coup against the Fatah faction of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.
