President Mahmoud Abbas's emergency government will pay all Palestinian Authority workers - excluding those who report directly to Hamas - their first full wages in 17 months, officials said on Monday. The payments will go to nearly 140,000 Palestinian Authority workers, including tens of thousands in Gaza, which Hamas seized by force on June 14.
"There will be full salaries for all civil and security sector (employees)," Riyad al-Malki, Abbas's minister of information, told reporters in the West Bank city of Ramallah, seat of the emergency cabinet.
But some 23,000 workers hired under Hamas after it won 2006 elections will be excluded, said a senior aide to Ismail Haniyeh, prime minister of the Hamas-led government that Abbas dismissed after the violent June take-over.
Abbas has made some limited payments to workers since Israel froze tax revenue transfers and Western powers imposed economic sanctions after Hamas's election win, a move that pushed the Palestinian Authority to the brink of financial collapse.
But according to Malki, full wages have not been paid by the Authority since February 2006. Salam Fayyad, the prime minister and finance minister in Abbas's Western-backed emergency government, has pledged to pay those who return to work in Gaza as long as they follow its instructions - and not those of Hamas.
Members of the Fatah-dominated security services in Gaza have also been asked by their commanders in the West Bank to stay at home as a condition for receiving their salaries.
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