Tens of thousands of Gaza Strip residents who are on the Palestinian Authority payroll have been terribly worried this past week. That is because it was disclosed that the PA may well cut hundreds, even thousands, of names from the payroll in the very near future.

The term “employed by the Authority in Gaza” is misleading, since most PA civil servants in Gaza are forcibly unemployed after they were fired from their jobs by the Hamas government. Exceptions: those who work in the border crossings and the health services. Thus, the PA in Ramallah still has direct responsibility for the fate of about 55,000 people who receive salaries even though they actually do not work.

According to a senior Palestinian source, the salary of each “employee” ranges from an average of $500 to $1,000 a month (depending on the position and rank). This means that the Palestinian Finance Ministry in Ramallah is forced to transfer astronomical sums of about $45 million every month to pay the salaries of the former PA civil servants in Gaza.

The salaries of the workers, in the West Bank as well as in Gaza, mainly come from aid money that is then transferred to the Palestinian Finance Ministry. And the aid money is comprised of donations of Arab states (mainly Saudi Arabia), the European Union and the American government. From 2015-2016, the Barack Obama administration suspended $221 million in financial support to the Palestinians allocated by Congress. Only hours before leaving the Oval Office, Obama approved the transfer of this financial assistance to the PA for humanitarian aid in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The Donald Trump administration halted this money transfer, and has just now, on March 9, confirmed that the money is being delivered — on the administration's conditions.