PA rejects Qatari plan to pay for Gaza power plant

Informed Western sources have revealed that the Palestinian Authority based in the occupied West Bank has rejected an offer by Qatar to pay for the sole electricity plant in the Gaza Strip for six months, Middle East Affairs said last week.

According to the sources, PA President Mahmoud Abbas approved the offer in principle, but then rejected it amidst fears caused by the ongoing truce talks brokered by Qatar and the UN. Apparently the government in Doha also offered to pay the salaries of public sector workers recruited while Hamas governed in Gaza, but the PA rejected that as well.

Trying to justify Abbas’s rejection, a member of the PLO Executive Committee, Ahmed Majdalani, claimed that the US is trying to fill the void with Hamas following the PA President’s distancing of himself from Washington. This, he alleged, is part of the “deal of the century”.

“There is an exposed American attempt to implement the deal of the century in the Gaza Strip under the disguise of a humanitarian project and truce deals,” said the PLO official.

According to members of the Fatah movement loyal to Mohamad Dahlan, and the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, however, the rejection of the Qatari offers is part of Abbas’s efforts to tighten the siege imposed on Gaza.

Read: Seeking ‘humanity’ in the Gaza truce agreement