Qatar pays Gaza salaries in effort to ease tensions
A total of $90 million is to be distributed in six monthly installments of $15 million, according to Gaza authorities, primarily to cover salaries of officials working in the Israel-blockaded Palestinian enclave.
A Palestinian man shows his money after receiving his salary in Rafah in southern Gaza on November 9, 2018.
Palestinian civil servants formed long queues in blockaded Gaza on Friday to receive Qatari-funded salaries, as part of efforts to ease tensions in and around the impoverished territory.
A total of $90 million is to be distributed in six monthly installments of $15 million, according to authorities, primarily to cover salaries of officials working for Hamas, that governs the Palestinian enclave.
Some exited post offices, where the first installment was being distributed, to show off hundred-dollar bills before the cameras.
The cash was driven into the Palestinian enclave through Israel late Thursday by Qatar's envoy to Gaza, Mohammad al Emadi, AFP news agency said, quoting a government source in Gaza.
In an Israeli-approved deal, Qatar has started buying additional fuel for Gaza's sole power station, allowing planned outages to be reduced to their lowest level in recent years.
Egypt and the United Nations have been brokering indirect negotiations for a long-term truce between Israel and Hamas who have fought three wars since 2008.
Fatah-Hamas reconciliation deal
In a Friday statement, Gaza's finance ministry said civil servants would receive roughly 60 percent of their monthly salaries – the most they have received in more than two years.
Hamas usually disburses 40 percent of Gaza civil servants' salaries every two months.
After Hamas wrested control of Gaza from rival Palestinian faction Fatah in 2007, it appointed roughly 40,000 new government employees to govern the coastal enclave.
The public-sector salary file is one of several issues that served to derail a recent Fatah-Hamas reconciliation deal after the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority refused to pay the salaries of Gaza's Hamas-appointed civil servants.
In October last year, the two factions signed a landmark reconciliation agreement in Cairo aimed at ending years of animosity.
The agreement, however, failed to bear fruit due to ongoing differences – both political and ideological – between the two movements.
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