Hamas starts paying civil servants

By DIAA HADID, Associated Press Writer 1 hour, 14 minutes ago
JERUSALEM - The Hamas government in the Gaza Strip will begin paying more than 10,000 civil servants who were cut from the payroll of its rival, the West Bank-based Fatah administration, a union official said Saturday.
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The payments further entrench the separation between one Palestinian government controlled by the Islamic militant Hamas in Gaza and another run by a U.S.-backed Cabinet of moderates in the West Bank.
After Hamas' violent takeover of Gaza in mid-June, President Mahmoud Abbas fired Hamas from the government and installed a new Cabinet headed by Prime Minister Salam Fayyad in the West Bank.
Western governments have cut off aid to Hamas, but it receives money from sympathetic governments such as Iran and from donations to its charities.
The Palestinian Authority employs about 165,000 people in the West Bank and Gaza, half of them members of the security forces. After the fall of Gaza to Hamas, Fayyad ordered civil servants in Gaza not to cooperate with Hamas.
Those who ignored the order or were hired by Hamas in the past year did not receive salaries in July. Among those were thousands of members of the Executive Force, a Hamas militia now policing Gaza.
Ala al-Batta, head of a Hamas-run civil servants' union in Gaza, told a local news radio Saturday that more than 10,000 government workers will receive their salaries from Hamas. Hamas officials said payments will begin Sunday.
The salaries of civil servants provide for about one-third of the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.
Also Saturday, the Fayyad government announced it reached a compromise with Israel that will enable some 6,000 Gazans stranded in Egypt since the beginning of June to return home gradually. The first group of 627 will cross back into Gaza on Sunday and Monday, officials said.
Their return had been delayed by a dispute over the Rafah terminal on the Gaza-Egypt border, Gaza's only gate to the world. Rafah has been closed since the start of the internal fighting that led to the Hamas takeover of Gaza in June.
Under a U.S.-brokered agreement between Israel and the Palestinians, the crossing was operated by Egypt and the Palestinians, with EU monitors deployed on the Palestinian side. During the Hamas takeover, the European monitors fled and Hamas militiamen took control of the terminal.
Israel and Egypt have refused to reopen the crossing as long as Hamas is on the border. The Fayyad government tried to negotiate a one-time deal for those stranded in Egypt, but balked at Israel's proposals to reroute them through Kerem Shalom, an Israeli-controlled crossing into Gaza.
Palestinian officials have said they are concerned Israel is trying to make the Rafah closure permanent. Under a compromise, the stranded travelers will come through a tiny crossing into Gaza that does not have the potential to be turned into an alternative to Rafah, said Ashraf Ajrami, a Cabinet minister in the Fayyad government.
Hamas denounced the compromise since it allowed Israel to decide who could enter Gaza. Hamas officials and supporters would presumably not be allowed to enter through Israel. Rafah's continued closure also means Hamas officials will find it more difficult to bring suitcases full of cash from outside supporters into the Gaza Strip.
"There is only the Rafah border crossing," Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said. "The use of any other border crossing increases Israeli control over the Gaza Strip."
Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Mark Regev would only say that Israel was searching for "creative solutions" to return the Palestinians to Gaza.
"No one wants to see those people trapped indefinitely," Regev said.
In another development, two Palestinian militants were killed Saturday while trying to plant a bomb near the Gaza-Israel border, militants and medical officials said. The slain fighters were members of Abbas' Fatah movement, they said.