Qatari cash reaches Gaza in campaign to ease tensions
GAZA CITY, Palestinian Territories: Palestinian civil servants formed long queues in Gaza to receive millions of dollars in Qatari-funded salaries, as part of efforts to ease tensions in and around the impoverished territory.
For the second consecutive Friday, clashes along the GazaIsrael border were less violent than in previous weeks, although one Palestinian was killed by Israeli fire and 37 others wounded by gunshots, the Gaza health ministry said.
Hundreds of demonstrators gathered at points along the frontier but most kept a distance from the separation barrier, correspondents said.
In Qatar’s operation, a total of US$90 million is to be distributed in six monthly instalments of US$15 million, according to authorities, primarily to cover salaries of officials working for Hamas, the Islamist movement that rules the Palestinian enclave.
Some exited post offices, where the first instalment was being distributed, to show off hundreddollar bills before the cameras, after several months of sporadic salary payments in cash-strapped Gaza. The money was driven into the Palestinian enclave through Israel late by Qatar’s envoy to Gaza, Mohammed al-Emadi, transporting suitcases packed with dollars, according to a Hamas source.
The Israeli-authorised money transfer appeared to be part of a deal that would see cash-strapped Hamas end months of often violent protests along the border in exchange for Israel easing its blockade of Gaza.
Qatar has also said it would hand out US$100 to each of 50,000 poor families, as well as larger sums to Palestinians wounded in clashes along Gaza’s border with Israel.
“I came to collect US$400, my salary for July,” Fadi Abu Safia, a 35-year-old government employee, said at a post office in Gaza City.
Mohamed Abed al-Hadi, 27, said he would be collecting 700 shekels (US$190 dollars), “quite a sum considering the conditions we’re living in”, as compensation for an injury in the border clashes.
Senior Palestine Liberation Organisation official Ahmed Majdalani expressed the discontent of the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority (PA) over the deal.
Emadi had ‘smuggled the money’ into Gaza in suitcases like a ‘gangster’, the official said.
“The PLO did not agree to the deal facilitating the money to Hamas that way,” Majdalani, who is close to Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas, told AFP.
Such a deal harmed Egyptian efforts to reconcile Hamas and the PA and would allow the Islamist movement to consolidate its control over Gaza, Majdalani said. Hamas has controlled Gaza since ousting forces loyal to the internationally recognised PA in a near civil war in 2007.
Israeli Defence Minister Avigdor Lieberman criticised the Qatari money transfer to Gaza.
“This is capitulation to terrorism, and in effect Israel is buying short-term calm with money, while severely undermining long-term security,” he said — AFP