Haniya for protests by Gaza workers

Salam Fayyad, the prime minister in the emergency administration, will be able to pay full salaries after the United States and other nations ended their crippling economic embargo of the Palestinian Authority when the new cabinet was swon in earlier this month.

Tax revenues

Israel has also released some of the tax revenues it collects on behalf of the Palestinians which were withheld after the Hamas government won elections early last year.

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Economic sanctions remain in place against the Hamas administration in Gaza and Haniya has refused to recognise Abbas’s order disbanding his government.

Almost 140,000 Palestinian Authority workers will receive the payments on Wednesday, including tens of thousands in Gaza, according to Western diplomats.

Fayyad has pledged to pay civil servants who return to work in Gaza as long as they follow the emergency government’s instructions – and not those of Hamas.

An aide to Haniya said this means that up to 23,000 workers who were hired after Hamas won parliamentary elections in January 2006 will miss out.

Haniya said the decision to exclude those employees went against “the minimal rights of Palestinian citizens” and would fuel resentment between Gaza, controlled by Hamas, and the West Bank, dominated by Abbas’s secular Fatah.