PA tightens purse strings on Hamas
In a report by the Palestinian Legislative Council’s Oversight and Human Rights Committee, the Palestinian Authority is accused of neglecting Gaza’s financial needs, while it is witnessing the deterioration of its people’s living conditions.
The Palestinian Legislative Council’s (PLC) Oversight and Human Rights Committee issued a report June 3 revealing what it deemed as the Palestinian Authority's (PA) financial neglect of the Gaza Strip, which is denied its financial allocations of the government's budget.
Al-Monitor attended the June 3 parliamentary session in Gaza and met with the chairman of the PLC’s Oversight Committee, member of parliament Yahya Moussa, who wrote the report. “The PA is working on a systematic policy aimed at deliberately destroying and weakening Gaza, in a bid to cause the collapse of public services and wreak havoc on the Gaza Strip,” he said. “President Mahmoud Abbas’ financial management when it comes to the Gaza Strip consists of implementing an exclusionary, discriminatory and marginalizing policy against the population. The 2014 financial data reveal the clear spending discrimination against Gaza and show how unfair it was to the Gaza staff. This worsened the economic and living conditions as well as the lives of the people."
On June 3, PLC deputy speaker Ahmed Bahar accused Abbas of creating economic and financial crises in the Gaza Strip that increased the severity of the siege and raised unemployment and poverty to the world's highest levels.
According to the report obtained by Al-Monitor, Gaza's contributions to the PA’s coffers during 2014 through taxes and fees amounted to $1.552 billion and constituted a very important source of revenue for the treasury.
