Palestinians growing desperate for money
By Steven Erlanger The New York Times
FRIDAY, MARCH 10, 2006
JERUSALEM In the last two weeks, the Palestinian Authority has been given
about $70 million - more than $40 million released by the World Bank, nearly
$21 million from the European Union and $10 million from Norway. But even once
all that cash arrives, the Palestinian Authority will have only 95 percent of
the money needed to pay February's overdue salaries, said the Palestinian
minister of national economy, Mazen Sinnoqrot.
How the Palestinian Authority will cover salaries for March, Sinnoqrot
said, "remains a mystery." And that is even before the victorious Islamic group
Hamas names a new Palestinian government, which will put a stop to significant
amounts of international aid.
"We're bankrupt," Sinnoqrot said bluntly in an interview Thursday in his
Ramallah office. "The world can't abandon us. It's in no one's interest, not
for Israel or anyone, to have the P.A. public sector collapse. To increase
unemployment this way would be a message of violence, not of peace."
Sinnoqrot is philosophical, but anxious. He needs $115 million a month
just to pay the salaries of about 145,000 public-sector employees, about half
of whom, he says, shaking his head, are listed as security forces, most of whom
have weapons.
The Palestinians get about $35 million a month from internal taxes. But
Israel is withholding about $55 million a month in customs and duties it
collects for the Palestinians, arguing that a Hamas majority in Parliament
means that Hamas, considered a terrorist group, controls the Palestinian
Authority.
The major donors - the European Union, the World Bank, the United States
and a few Arab nations - do not agree, because Hamas has not yet formed a
government, a moment the West wants to postpone until after Israel's March 28
election.
Even if Israel were handing over the taxes, Sinnoqrot and the Palestinian
Authority would still be in a significant hole, since the monthly budget is
about $165 million.
Sinnoqrot calls the Israeli decision to withhold money "neither legal nor
acceptable," a "collective punishment" of Palestinians for voting in Hamas.
Sinnoqrot, a devout Muslim but not a Hamas member, is a potential finance
minister for a Hamas government. But he says that no one from Hamas, including
the prime minister-designate, Ismail Haniya, has talked to him since the
election.
Sinnoqrot urges the world to see the Hamas victory "as a real window of
opportunity" created by democracy.
But Israel and the quartet - the United States, the European Union,
Russia and the United Nations - have warned that a new Hamas government will
face isolation and further cuts in funds unless it recognizes Israel, rejects
violence and accepts the validity of previous Israeli-Palestinian agreements.
Those are major hurdles that Hamas is unlikely to get over soon, if ever,
but if Hamas does not, warned the U.S. assistant secretary of state for Near
Eastern affairs, David Welch, the United States intends "to make their ability
to function as a government enormously difficult."
On Friday in Salzburg, European Union foreign ministers warned Hamas that
"money will not flow to the new authority unless it seeks peace by peaceful
means," in the words of the EU's external relations commissioner, Benita
Ferrero-Waldner. "We want to remain a reliable partner for the Palestinian
people, but we will not go soft on our principles," she said.
At the same time, the EU foreign policy chief, Javier Solana, said Europe
"must find ways to support the Palestinian people," and he added: "We want to
maintain what has taken us so many years to build up: a Palestinian Authority
that is the embryo of a state we must complete and which one day will exist."
Hamas is considered unlikely to make the world's choices easy, so Solana,
Welch and the quartet's envoy, James Wolfensohn, are exploring how to create a
new structure to funnel money to the Palestinians through President Mahmoud
Abbas, of the Fatah party, somehow bypassing the authority.
Sinnoqrot thinks that is a bad idea. "We shouldn't have a shadow
government here," he said. "It's not our way."
A senior Fatah official and a crucial figure in controlling the
Palestinian security services, Jibril Rajoub, warned in a separate interview
the world must help ensure "that we keep the security apparatus out of this
situation," in part by ensuring that the armed men get paid.
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