WAFA: "President Mahmoud Abbas issued today an order terminating the services of all his advisors, in their capacity as advisors, regardless of their title or ranking.
He also decided to abolish the decisions + contracts related to them, and...
/more -->
"...and to suspend the rights + privileges they received in their capacity as advisors".
english.wafa.ps/page.aspx?id=h…
WAFA: President orders former government to give back money received
prior to his decision on salaries
"President Mahmoud Abbas issued today an order obliging the [former] PM [Rami Hamdallah] +members of the former 17th govt [incl Shukri Bishara, Minister of Finance + Planning..
...who is one of the few ministers who was continued under PM Shtayyah]
to return the money they'd received during the period prior to his decision regarding their salaries + gratuities, and this money should be paid back in one lump sum"...
"He also decided to consider the amounts [they] subsequently receive[d] after his decision [to increase their salaries, a decision subsequently rescinded under PM Shtayyah after leaks that appeared to come from at least one of the former ministers] as gratuities"...
"In the same context, the President decided to retrieve all the money received by the PM [Hamdallah] and members of the former 17th govt as rental allowance if they did not prove their rental status during that period". english.wafa.ps/page.aspx?id=o…
AFP report from Ramallah: "Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas has fired all of his advisers, his office said Monday, amid a financial crisis in the occupied West Bank that has prompted deep salary cuts. Abbas's office did not provide further details on the number of advisers or..
"...the costs involved, pointing only to a brief statement issued through official Palestinian news agency WAFA...
news.yahoo.com/palestinian-pr…
[V @AFP = In Feb, Israel began to deduct over $10 million/month -- $138 million for the year -- "corresponding to what Israel says the PalestAuth paid prisoners in Israeli jails, or their families, in 2018".,,"Abbas has accused Israel of blackmail + refused to take any of the tax
"...transfers, which account for some 65 percent of PA revenues. The PA has cut salaries for most its tens of thousands of employes by half to keep the government afloat. On top of [that], the US has also cut hundreds of millions of dollars in aid to Palestinians"...
According to this @AFP report from Ramallah = "!srael collects some $190 million
a month in customs duties levied on goods destined for Palestinian markets that transit through its ports"...
In Jan/Feb [not clear], Israel unilaterally began deducting over $10 million/month
from this revenue [which in the Oslo Accord days of the mid-1990's was imagined to be enough to support the Palest Auth, but now it's only abt 1/3 of the budget] -- leaving abt $180 million/month
...that the Palestinian leadership has refused to accept b/c they strongly object
to Israel's unilateral deductions. That money has stayed with Israel since Feb
[so, 7 months so far x $180 million = $1,260,000,000, sitting somewhere in Israel, under Israeli control + Israel has
...reportedly been making more unilateral deductions from that money, which legally is Palestinian...An initial report in late July said 300,000,000 Shekels was deducted to pay electricity arrears or debts...Yet, today, we read Israel Electric Corp is about to cut electricity!!!
Something is clearly very wrong here, actually many things are very wrong -- but there appears to be no justification for any IEC elecricity cuts, which are in any case collective punishment of all Palestinian customers in the central West Bank...
Then, further reports indicated Ithat srael has taken, unilaterally, at least 500,000,000
of the 1,200,000,000 sitting somewhere, too temptingly. in Israel -- and unilaterally paid some of the court judgements ordered by Israeli courts against Palestinian persons/institutions...
These reports emerged around the time that Pres Abbas called a leadership meeting in Ramallah on Thurs July 25 after which, after 21h00 on a Thursday night [the start of the weekend, here] Abbas announced the suspenciion of all agreements signed with Israel, starting "tomorrow"..
But then, again, nothing happened...
Pres Abbas + PM Shtayyah were reportedly furious about the additional + apparently continuing Israeli unilateral deductions [because they can] from
the Palestunian money referenced above, but nothing happened publicly...
until this afternoon
And, what happened this afternoon is just an "internal" matter...
Back to the @AFP report from Ramallah this evening -- it adds"
"Jihad Harb, a Palestinian political analyst, said it appeared Abbas had decided
to sack his advisers after receiving a report in June on payments to ministers + officials".
Abbas got the eport in June + acted today
Harb told AFP" "It is clear that President Abbas received the report from the committee that examined the salaries + benefits of employees"
+
He "wants to reduce his office's spending by taking austerity measures
to confront the current budget crisis."
news.yahoo.com/palestinian-pr…
While the repayments from the former ministers + "others" will represent large sums for the individuals involved -- and there are bound to be stong negative reactions, the scale + scope of which are hard to predict -- they will not go far in solving the budget crisis...
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