RAMALLAH: The Palestinian Authority will pay its employees’ August salaries on time and Hamas civil servants in Gaza “as soon as possible”, a spokesman for the unity government said yesterday.
On Tuesday, Hamas and Israel agreed an Egypt-mediated ceasefire to end a deadly 50-day war with Israel in Gaza that killed more than 2,100 Palestinians.
Yesterday’s move comes after a row over pay erupted between the two Palestinian factions in June when the PA’s Gaza-based staff received their wages but their Hamas counterparts went empty-handed. “The salaries of the civil servants with the Authority will be paid next week and the government is trying to pay those of Hamas as soon as possible,” government spokesman Ihab Bseiso told AFP.
Under a reconciliation deal signed in April with the West Bank-based Palestine Liberation Organisation, which dominates the PA, Hamas disbanded its Gaza government.
Since then the Islamist movement has insisted that the PA should pay the salaries of Hamas’s 42,000 civil servants.
The PA refused to pay the officials in June because they were appointed after Hamas ousted bitter rivals Fatah — which dominates the PLO — from Gaza in 2007 and therefore were not registered as its employees.
The pay row was the first challenge to the new Palestinian unity government, formed to try to end years of Palestinian rivalry.
AFP
