Palestinian Says Ban Could Lead to Chaos
Tuesday, May 9, 2006; Page A19
GAZA CITY, May 8 -- The Palestinian prime minister, Ismail Haniyeh, warned Monday on the eve of a key international donors meeting that the Palestinian Authority, cut off from most foreign aid since his Hamas movement took office five weeks ago, could founder unless new money arrives.
"If the siege continues, the whole authority will be facing collapse," Haniyeh said in an interview in his office here. "And if there is a collapse, there will be chaos in the region."
  Premier Ismail Haniyeh's plea comes ahead of a donor's meeting. (Hatem Moussa - AP) |
Haniyeh spoke as envoys from the United States, the European Union, Russia and the United Nations, a group of Middle East peace interlocutors known as the quartet, prepared to meet Tuesday in New York to discuss funding for the Palestinian Authority under the leadership of Hamas, which won legislative elections in January and now controls the government ministries.
Nearly half of the authority's roughly $2 billion annual budget is funded with foreign donations. The government has been unable to pay salaries for 150,000 civil servants and security personnel for the past two months because of cuts in foreign aid and Israel's decision to stop the transfer of roughly $55 million in tax and custom revenue it collects monthly on the Palestinians' behalf.
Visible across the Palestinian territories, the economic squeeze is most acute in Gaza, home to 1.3 million Palestinians. In Gaza's gold market Monday, Nahed al-Zayim stared at the wedding ring her husband, a Palestinian police officer, gave her six years ago. She had placed it on a glass counter offering it for sale, joining several other wives of public employees who had not been paid in two months.
A European Commission assessment prepared in advance of the meeting of the quartet estimated that Palestinian civil service employees have accrued $340 million in debt since the aid suspension began.
Her head covered by a black scarf, Zayim said she needed the proceeds from her ring to buy diapers and milk supplements for her three children, including Hazem, 4, who tugged at her tunic in the afternoon bustle. "This is the last one, we have no more," Zayim, 28, said of her ring.
The United States classifies Hamas as a terrorist organization. In addition to cutting off aid, the Bush administration is threatening international banks with sanctions under anti-terrorist laws if they handle accounts or money transfers for the Palestinian Authority. Haniyeh said this has made it impossible to collect new financial pledges.
"We are asking the quartet to reconsider its position and deal with the Palestinian government," Haniyeh said. "We did not come here through a military coup."
"All we ask of the American administration is that it doesn't use the suffering of the Palestinian people as material for political blackmail," he said.
Hamas, known formally as the Islamic Resistance Movement, advocates the creation of a Palestinian state across territory that includes Israel. As a condition for aid, the quartet has demanded that Hamas recognize Israel's right to exist, renounce violence and honor previous agreements with the Jewish state. Haniyeh, 43, said his government would not meet those demands.
A full collapse of the Palestinian Authority would mean an end to the semiautonomous Palestinian government that was established by the 1993 Oslo peace accords and could bring on a larger political and financial role for Israel in the Palestinian territories, which it occupied in the 1967 Middle East war. That could complicate the agenda of Israel's new government, which is preparing to evacuate isolated Jewish settlements in parts of the West Bank.
