GAZA, April 15: Russia promised emergency funds for the cash-strapped Palestinian Authority (PA) on Saturday, breaking on the issue with the United States and the EU, Moscow’s partners along with the United Nations in the Quartet of Middle East peace mediators.
In Moscow, a foreign ministry statement said the offer of urgent Russian aid came in a phone conversation on Friday between Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.
It was not immediately clear when the aid would arrive.
Mr Lavrov has previously said that halting aid was a mistake, though he has urged Hamas to meet the demands of international mediators.
Mr Abbas this week warned that the Palestinian Authority faced economic collapse unless it received funds soon.
In Gaza Strip dozens of Palestinian security men stormed a government building and blocked roads, demanding the Hamas-led administration pay overdue salaries.
“Salaries, or go home,” the protesters chanted in the central town of Khan Younis, directing their message at Hamas in the biggest such demonstration since the militant group assumed power last month following its January election victory.
The security men, some of them firing in the air, burst into a government building in the town, briefly occupying offices and forcing workers to leave. They also blocked roads leading south to Rafah, on the border with Egypt.
Salaries for the 140,000 employees on the Palestinian Authority’s payroll are two weeks overdue. Many of the protesters in Khan Younis belonged to President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah faction, Hamas’s political rival.
The United States and the European Union have cut direct aid to the Hamas-led government because it has not met their demands to ‘renounce violence’, recognise Israel and agree to abide by interim peace deals.
The US Treasury Department has also barred Americans, US companies and the subsidiaries of foreign firms from pursuing most business dealings with the Palestinian Authority.
NO MONEY: “The economy is paralysed. We can’t buy groceries because no one will give us credit. Taxi drivers, won’t give us a ride, because we don’t have money,” said Abu Mohammed, a leader of the protesters, most of them from the rival Fatah movement.
“We warn this is only a first step,” he said.
Palestinian Finance Minister Omar Abdel Razek of Hamas said on Al Jazeera satellite television that he was ‘appalled and astonished’ by the Khan Younis protest.
“Everyone knows (the cash crunch) is the result of the oppressive isolation that is forced on the Palestinian people and the government.
They all know that the account is empty ... and we don’t have enough to pay salaries,” he said.—Reuters
