DOHA: Qatar has granted $150m to the Palestinian Authority (PA) to help revive its economy as peace talks with Israel have run aground, Palestinian Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah said yesterday.
The PA, which relies on foreign aid to plug a chronic budget deficit, has long struggled to pay salaries of some 170,000 civil servants and finance the costs of running main services in the occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
Gaza’s only power plant was forced to switch off its generators earlier this month due to a shortage of fuel which the PA has been unable to pay for.
“We asked for $150m, and the Emir was very accepting of this. We hope it will be granted at the soonest time possible,” Hamdallah said after talks with the Emir H H Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani.
“We have a lot of resources in Palestine but we are facing these economic problems because of the occupation.”
Last month, US Secretary of State John Kerry said in Paris after talks with the Foreign Minister Dr Khaled bin Mohammed Al Attiyah that Qatar had agreed to provide $150m in debt relief to PA.
Hamdallah had said in September that PA needed to raise $500m by the end of 2013 to allow it to continue functioning and pay its employees’ salaries.
He said the Emir also promised to ease measures governing Palestinian employment in Qatar.
The World Bank said last month the Palestinian economy in the Israeli-occupied West Bank shrank for the first time in a decade in the first half of 2013, blaming a decline in foreign aid and restrictions imposed by Israel. The bank blamed the 0.1 percent economic contraction on a decline in foreign budget support to PA, saying it exposed the “distorted nature” of the economy. Israel has pointed repeatedly to strong growth in the West Bank in recent years as vital to restoring relative stability to the area. Reuters
