Netanyahu to transfer NIS 100M to Gaza
Sum, coordinated with United Nations, intended to pay salaries of PA and UNRWA employees in Gaza; sources fear it will end up in Hamas hands
Israel will transfer some NIS 100 million (about $24 million) to banks in the Gaza Strip Tuesday afternoon in order to pay employees of the Palestinian Authority and the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA).
But many sources, including the Legal Forum for the Land of Israel, warned that these workers actually serve the Hamas government and expressed concern that it would end up in the hands of terror operatives.
The transfer was coordinated between Israel and the UN, in an effort to mitigate the shortage of ready cash in the area, which impedes the activities of UNRWA and PA workers. At the request of the UN, the sum will be transferred in dollars.
The money belongs to the PA according to existing arrangements with Israel in which Israel collects taxes levied on Palestinian wares. As such, the Authority will be responsible for handing out the money to UN employees as well as their own.
About half of the amount will go to paying PA workers, despite Israeli complaints that PA workers in Gaza are actually affiliated with Hamas.
Israel has transferred similar sums to Gaza banks several times in the past two years. Part of the funds are being exchanged for damaged money currently in the possession of Gaza banks and the rest is a standard transfer by the Israeli government of the tax earnings owed to the PA.
At the beginning of February, a short while after Operation Cast Lead, former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert ordered the transmission of NIS 175 million (about $42 million) to pay PA salaries, as coordinated with the government of Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad.
A few weeks later, Ynet reported that about half of the sum meant to pay these salaries was distributed as compensation to Gazans whose homes had been damaged in the IDF operation rather than passed on to the accounts of PA employees.
This was done at the request of Fayyad, who transferred NIS 90 million (about $21 million) to these people, not necessarily affiliated with Fatah, through the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), despite the fact that the Israeli government had calmed detractors by assuring that the entirety of the NIS 175 million would be transferred to pay PA salaries.
