PA pays 70% of employees' salaries for July, as financial crisis continues

The Palestinian Authority Ministry of Finance has said that it will only be able to pay 70 per cent of its employees’ salaries in the civil and security sectors for July, as its financial crisis continues. The ministry did not explain how it managed to collect the funds allowing it to make these salary payments.

“The date for disbursing the salaries of public employees for the month of July is Thursday by no less than 70 per cent and a minimum of 3,500 shekels [about $943 dollars],” explained the ministry. “Based on this calculation, more than 70 per cent of employees will receive their full salaries, as they are employees whose salaries are not more than 3,500 shekels.” The outstanding amounts owed to the employees to date will be disbursed when financial capabilities allow, it added.

The PA relies mainly on tax revenues to pay its employees’ salaries and cover its operating expenses. The bulk of this money is collected by Israel on behalf of the PA in what is known as clearance revenues on goods that pass through the occupation state to the Palestinian market in exchange for a three per cent commission. Israel controls all of the crossings linking the occupied West Bank to the outside world. In recent years, there has been a delay in transferring these funds, often as a result of punitive measures imposed by the Israeli regime, which has led to the PA’s inability to meet its financial obligations to its employees and private sector suppliers.

The PA says that the total amount of clearance revenues withheld by Israel stands at six billion shekels ($1.6bn). Last month, Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Mustafa said that the Israeli parliament had passed a new law allowing Israeli families to be “compensated” from Palestinian tax revenues collected by the occupation government.

“This is a new Israeli law that allows Israeli families to be compensated from clearance revenues with astronomical amounts of up to 10m shekels (about $2.7m) for the family of each Israeli killed,” explained Mustafa during the weekly government meeting in Ramallah, “and to deduct no less than five million shekels ($1.35m) as compensation for the wounded, without specifying the extent of the injury.”

The PA accused the occupation state of trying to pressure it by deducting from its tax funds. The PA prime minister described the situation as “political and financial blackmail” intended, he claimed, to stop the PA transferring the Gaza Strip’s allocations of salaries for medical staff, teachers, relief crews and others, amounting to about 275 million shekels ($74m) per month. “It has continued to deduct the same amount from the clearance funds since last October, in an effort to continue obstructing the unification of the two parts of the homeland.”

Last year, Israel decided to withhold the value of the stipends paid by the PA to families who have lost members in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and families of Palestinian detainees, and demanded that the PA should not pay them.

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