RAMALLAH, West Bank — Tens of thousands of protesters took to the streets recently to decry a Palestinian Authority (PA) decision to slash its employees’ salaries in the Gaza Strip by 30-50%. The move is prompting a meeting that could change the relationship between PA rival political parties Hamas and Fatah — for better or worse.

The April 4 salary cut announcement sparked a public outcry from Palestinian factions, human rights organizations and government employees, thousands of whom demonstrated April 8 and demanded that Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah be dismissed.

The PA government, based in Ramallah, did not call for cuts to its West Bank employees' salaries.

An estimated 58,000 civil servants worked at public Gaza institutions before Hamas came to power in Gaza in 2007, when the Hamas-Fatah rivalry divided the PA. At that time, the PA ordered its Gaza employees to stop going to work amid a state of chaos that plagued the Strip and the violence that erupted between both sides. This led Hamas to appoint its own civil servants there to run the ministries. Meanwhile, the PA has continued to pay its employees' salaries all these years despite them not working.