Hamas can’t find a way to cover the PA’s bills. Everyone take a moment to listen to the universe’s smallest violin playing the universe’s fastest sad tune.
RAMALLAH, West Bank (AP) – The Hamas-led government has still not found a way to pay its 165,000 employees, whose salaries already are three weeks overdue, the finance minister said Thursday.
Finance Minister Omar Abdel Razek also told The Associated Press in an interview that there is no guarantee money pledged by Muslim countries will reach the empty Palestinian treasury.
The government employees are the backbone of the Palestinian labor force, and their salaries sustain about one-third of the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The March salaries, due at the beginning of April, have not been paid. Abdel Razek said he could not commit to a payment date.
“For sure, the salaries are my main priority, but it is a problem,” Abdel Razek said. “It’s a puzzling problem. You can’t do anything. You can only wait. So I have a strange feeling. For the first time, I find myself in such a dilemma. But I hope that God will provide a solution.”
[…] In the two months between the election and Hamas’ assumption of power, the outgoing government of the defeated Fatah Party hired 9,000 more employees, he said. The number of security officers has risen to 80,000, from the 60,000 reported by the last government, he said.
The Palestinian Authority needs about $160 million every month – $118 million for the payroll and $40 million in operating costs, he said. The government has about $30 million in monthly income, but that money is being spent on the most crucial ministries – health and social welfare.
The United States and the European Union have cut off hundreds of millions of dollars in aid to the Palestinian Authority since Hamas formed its Cabinet late last month. The West says it will shun the Hamas-led government until the Islamic militants recognize Israel, renounce violence and accept existing peace agreements.
Israel also cut off its monthly transfer of about $55 million in taxes it collects on behalf of the Palestinian Authority.
In a report issued Wednesday, the United Nations warned of a grave humanitarian crisis if the foreign funding remains frozen, with poverty in the West Bank and Gaza reaching as high as 75 percent.
And the money quote:
Asked about a long-term solution, Abdel Razek said: “The required way out is impossible because we are not going to concede our principles.”
He said the group would try to open a dialogue with the West, but was evasive about how it would do so without meeting the three demands of the international community.
Feel free to eat the metal shrapnel that would otherwise be placed in suicide bombs. It should satisfy your daily iron requirements.
Of course, the world is going to blink and allow the aid to pour through any minute now. Just watch. They have no problem at all with terrorists running the PA. They let Arafat do it for decades.
With all the nice fresh new flags they wave at rallies, I prefer “Let them eat flag.”
If they are thirsty, let them drink seawater. If they have a need for minerals in their diet, let them eat the dirt under their feet.
If they really want to prosper, they should recognize Israel, disband the militias, and change their education systems to produce people with more skills then just blowing themselves up.
chsw
Maybe they should give ol’ Suha a call… ;)
They voted for Hamas, didn’t they? That was their CHOICE.
Why doesn’t Israel choose to shut off the water and electricity, and anythng else they can thnk of?
Cry me a freaking river.
Choice carries responsibility. They made their bed of roses, let them lie with the thornes! Good riddance to bad rubbish!
cshw
They don’t care about prospering, they just want to kill Jews. They will live in squalor and let themselves be ruled by tyrants in order to do so.
Hamas will not give up its principled position in favor of genocide merely for filthy lucre. Works for me. As for the humanitarian crisis the UN sees coming, there has been one since the Palis started blowing up Jews and nobody at the UN paid any attention except to scream at Israel for defending itself and its people.
And what happened to all that money the Wahhabist Entity and the Mad Mullahs were going to send? Their Muslim Brothers show once again their true feelings of solidarity with the Palis.
Let them starve. After the way the Palis have behaved since the Oslo Accords (aka the Second Traety of Hudabiya) the Israelis can do to them whatever they wish as far as I am concerned, short of Arab-style mass murder.
What should the Palis do? Find somebody who will advocate peace (that does not include Abbas and his consiglieri by the way). Create a large, grassroots movement to seek peace and end terrorism. Demand the resignation of the leaders of the PA and the PLO and new elections then put the peace advocates in office. When in office make peace on the basis of the Green line as adjusted, no army and only a reasonable police force, free economic relations between the new PA territory and Israel, and give up Jerusalem, with Muslim rights to visit the mosques guaranteed and their property left in the hands of the idiotic waqf that is presently destroying them (but hey, they’re Muslims dontcherknow, so that makes it OK).
Yeah I know, it’ll never happen and if it did the peace advocates would be murdered in five minutes. I said should do, not will do.
And of course National
PalestinePropagandaPublic Radio had a heart rending story this morning about the aid cutoff’s devastating effect on innocent Gaza families, especially since the family they profiled supports Fatah (who of course was NEVER involved in attacks on Israeli civilians, right, NPR?). And of course the reporter cited the economic impact of the border closings, which Israel imposed “citing security concerns” (which of course are all solely in Israel’s mind).Also cited were the awful effects of having to listen to Israel’s constant artillery fire into Gaza in response to the “launching of crude missiles” into Israel. No mention that those crude missiles have killed people, or that they have an effect on Israeli civilians.
I’m not holding my breath for an NPR story about the impact of terrorism and rocket attacks on innocent Israelis in, say, Sderot.
Once again, NPR pushes the position that there should be no economic consequences to waging a genocidal war of extermination against an economically and (B’H) militarily stronger state. NPR even quoted a British UNWRA official that once cannot solve a security crisis by creating a humanitarian crisis.
I guess the RAF should have dropped food packages on Dreseden and Berlin while the Germans were firing V-2’s into Europe.