Ismail Haniyeh
Photo: AP
Hamas urges Gaza workers to protest wage cut-off
Ismail Haniyeh calls for public protests against Abbas’ emergency government over its refusal to pay salaries to workers hired by Hamas in Gaza; ‘press ahead with your campaign until the wrongdoing is corrected’
Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh called on Tuesday for public protests against Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’ emergency government over its refusal to pay salaries to workers hired by Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
“Press ahead with your campaign until the wrongdoing is corrected,” Haniyeh, prime minister of the Hamas-led government Abbas sacked last month, told Gaza workers not eligible for salaries being disbursed to other Palestinian civil servants.
Cooperation
Associated Press
Officials from both sides meet in undisclosed location to discuss advancement of security cooperation, PM’s spokeswoman says. Palestinians say session was latest in flurry of contacts of recent weeks
Abbas’ emergency government, headed by Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, plans to pay all Palestinian Authority workers—excluding up to 23,000 who report to Hamas—their first full wages in 17 months starting on Wednesday.
Fayyad will be able to pay the full salaries now that Israel, the United States and other major Western powers have ended their crippling economic embargo of the Palestinian Authority after Abbas sacked Haniyeh’s government last month.
Economic sanctions remain in place against Hamas in its Gaza stronghold. Haniyeh has refused to recognise Abbas’ order disbanding his government, which followed this Islamist Hamas’ seizure of control in the Gaza Strip on June 14.
Fayyad’s payments will go to nearly 140,000 Palestinian Authority workers, including tens of thousands in Gaza, according to Western diplomats.
Israeli, PA security officials meet
Fayyad has pledged to pay civil servants in Gaza if they follow his government’s instructions. And Gaza members of the Fatah-dominated security forces have been told they will be paid if they stay at home.
But up to 23,000 workers hired under Hamas after it won January 2006 parliamentary elections will be excluded from Fayyad’s payroll, an aide to Haniyeh said. Also excluded are nearly 6,000 members of Hamas’ elite Executive Force, which played a key role in the fighting that routed Fatah in Gaza.
Israel said on Tuesday it had resumed talks with the Palestinian Authority for the first time in more than a year in a bid to bolster the Western-backed Abbas.
Olmert’s spokeswoman, Miri Eisin, said security officials from both sides met on Monday. Israel had suspended all security coordination with the Palestinians after the rise to power last year of Hamas, which refuses to recognize the Jewish state.
Israel’s Channel 2 television said Olmert would meet with Abbas next week for the first time since their June 25 summit in Egypt. Eisin said the two had agreed to meet once every two weeks but there were not final plans yet for another session.
Saeb Erekat, a senior Palestinian official, denied there was any firm plan for another meeting.
The Popular Resistance Committees, an umbrella militant group called in Gaza on its fighters to turn a crossing Palestinians believe Israel wants to open with Gaza to replace the Rafah terminal with Egypt “into a ball of fire”.
Since Hamas’ takeover, Gaza’s main border crossings have largely been closed, including the Rafah crossing with Egypt, drawing criticism from some aid groups.
In the occupied West Bank town of Hebron, Israeli soldiers shot and killed a Palestinian teenager they had mistaken for a gunman, and who it turned out was carrying a toy weapon, a military spokeswoman and a Palestinian hospital official said.
