TUFI Campaign: Time to end the Palestinian Funding Crisis and pay salaries for Public Sector Workers
A deal to partially resolve the ongoing Palestinian financial crisis has been proposed by representatives of the international community. Direct aid transfers to the Palestinian Authority have been significantly reduced since the election of the Hamas government in January, with the EU and US suspending direct aid on April 7th. The EU argued that it could not continue to give direct aid to the PA as the Hamas government had not yet agreed to reject violence (although has broadly held to a ‘calm’ since March 2005), recognise Israel or respect previous agreements made by the PA. However it committed itself to find other ways of making money available to the Palestinian people. As a result of the direct aid freeze 160,000 Palestinian Public Sector workers, many of them PGFTU members, have not been paid their salaries for up to two months causing significant hardship and damage to the economy.
On May 9th the Quartet (comprised of the EU, US, Russia and the UN) agreed the creation of a ‘temporary international mechanism’ to channel money to pay public sector salaries for an initial three-month period, bypassing the Hamas-led PA. The scheme is being set up by the EU with input from other international institutions including the UN and World Bank. The scheme has received support from Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas who said that he would, ‘like the mechanism approved by the Quartet last week implemented as soon as possible, so we can avoid this catastrophe’. Abbas has previously called for Hamas to respect existing agreements and recognise Israel but asked that the international community give Hamas time to adjust its policies and not punish the Palestinian people for exercising their democratic rights.
TUFI believes it is essential that Palestinian public sector workers receive their salaries. Every effort must be made to ensure this mechanism exists as soon as possible and that provisions are established to provide back payment for the two months workers have been without salaries. This is not a long term solution to the problem, however if Hamas and the international community are unable to resolve their substantial disagreements on key issues, the potential to extend such a mechanism will ensure that Palestinian workers are not made to suffer as a result.
We call on British Trade Unionists to lobby the UK Government to ensure Palestinian doctors, teachers and other public sector workers are able to be paid.