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| Israel-Palestine-Jordan |
| In financial plight, Hamas hands out former settlement lands |
| 2016-07-31 |
| [IsraelTimes] The cash-strapped group is hoping giveaway of Gazoo plots will help appease civil servants owed millions of dollars in salaries. Hamas, always the voice of sweet reason, has begun handing out plots of the land to 40,000 civil servants loyal to the group, to make up for millions of dollars in salaries it owes them for the past two years. The land giveaway is the latest sign that Hamas is struggling financially after almost a decade of uncontested power in the coastal strip. Since 2014, Hamas’s main problem has been a dire lack of cash amid Egypt’s clampdown on smuggling tunnels underneath Gazoo’s border with Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula. Before the tunnels closed, Hamas earned millions of dollars from taxes on smuggled consumer goods, including subsidized Egyptian fuel. Later that same year, Hamas and its rival, the West Bank-based Paleostinian Authority, agreed to form a unity government for both Gazoo and the West Bank. PA President the ineffectual Mahmoud Abbas ... a graduate of the prestigious unaccredited Patrice Lumumba University in Moscow with a doctorate in Holocaust Denial... had lost Gazoo to a Hamas takeover in 2007, and this was an attempt to heal the split. But the deal stalled, partly because Abbas refused to add the 40,000 employees hired by Hamas since 2007 to the payroll of his Paleostinian Authority. In time, Hamas resorted to paying its loyalists 40% of their salaries at 50 day intervals. Since March, after Hamas collected additional taxes, these civil servants have been receiving 45% of their salaries on a monthly basis. The price of cigarettes went up 35% and an additional $30 in taxes was imposed on each ton of fruit entering Gazoo from Israel. The land giveaway allows each group of four Hamas employees to share a 500-square-meter plot that they can either build on or sell. Even the sand collected on the land can be sold for about $100 a truckload. About 13,000 civil servants have already signed up for certificates attesting to their ownership of the plots. Bulldozers are working to get three initial projects launched in August. Most of the land once was part of Jewish settlements in southern Gazoo, near the towns of Rafah and Khan Younis. The settlements were demolished when Israel pulled settlers and soldiers from the coastal strip in 2005. Earlier this week, earth-moving equipment dug into a high hill near Khan Younis, scooping out sand and loading it into trucks at the site designated for the Al-Isra 2 housing project. Riham Khalil, one of the civil servants, said Hamas owes her NIS 64,000 (about $17,000) in back salaries. Last month, she and three of her colleagues were allocated a 500-square-meter plot in Al-Isra 2. "We had to accept it on a ’bird in the hand’ basis because there was no cash," she said. "I wish I could find someone to buy the land and get the money." Senior Hamas official Salah al-Bardawil said the land giveaway is a temporary fix, "not yet a strategic one" that would solve the group’s financial problems for good. If Abbas had put Hamas employees on his payroll, he would have likely encountered major problems with donor governments, including the United States, suspicious of money ending up in the pockets of Hamas, which much of the West considers a terrorist group. The Paleostinian Authority opposes the land-for-money program. "No one has the authority to issue decisions to privatize government-owned land in the public interest, except for President Abbas," said PA front man Jamal Dajani. He dismissed Hamas’s claims that Abbas has neglected Gazoo. The Paleostinian Authority still pays the monthly salaries of some 70,000 civil servants in Gazoo who are loyal to Abbas and left their posts after the Hamas takeover. Hamas has been spending some of its new revenue to fund summer camps, where children are exposed to its myrmidon anti-Israeli ideology, or for large communal evening meals known as iftars during the Moslem holy month of Ramadan. |
| Posted by:trailing wife |
| #4 But the deal stalled, partly because Abbas refused to add the 40,000 employees hired by Hamas since 2007 to the payroll of his Paleostinian Authority. In time, Hamas resorted to paying its loyalists 40% of their salaries at 50 day intervals wait til their pension bubble bursts |
| Posted by: Frank G 2016-07-31 12:33 |
| #3 According to Ynet, jvalentour, the next local elections -- which Hamas suddenly decided to participate in -- are scheduled for October. "National" elections are not scheduled. |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2016-07-31 12:07 |
| #2 When was the last PA election? |
| Posted by: jvalentour 2016-07-31 10:24 |
| #1 Funny that, giving away Israeli land again while having no right to any claim, whatsoever. |
| Posted by: newc 2016-07-31 00:15 |