Marian Houk Profile picture
Aug 19, 2019 22 tweets 5 min read Read on X
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the amounts [they] subsequently receive[d] after his decision [to increase their salaries, a decision subsequently rescinded under PM Shtayyah after leaks that appeared to come from at least one of the former ministers] as gratuities"...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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More from @Marianhouk

Feb 4
OCHA Flash Update #110, just in:
Between the afternoons of 2 + 4 February,
acc to the Ministry of Health (MoH) in Gaza,
234 Palestinians were killed
(107 on 3 Feb + 127 on 4 Feb)
+
343 Palestinians were injured
(165 on 3 Feb + 178 on 4 Feb)...
ochaopt.org/content/hostil…
OCHA:
"Between 7 Oct 2023 and 13:30 on 4 Feb 2024:
at least 27,365 Palestinians were killed in Gaza
and 66,630 Palestinians were injured,
according to the MoH"...
OCHA:
"As of 4 February:
223 [ISR] soldiers were killed
+
1,296 soldiers were injured in Gaza
since the beginning of the ground operation,
according to the Israeli military".
Read 10 tweets
Oct 22, 2023
Ramallah, October 20, 2023
Israeli forces operating a U.S.-sourced Apache
attack helicopter fired a missile toward a group of Palestinian civilians, mostly children, around 1:30 p.m. on Oct 19 in Nour Shams Refugee Camp near Tulkarem..killing ten Palestinians, incl four children
"The four Palestinian children killed in the attack
are Yousef Mohammad Omar Zaghdad, 11, Mujahed Mohammad Yousef Sa’aydeh, 15, Udai Ma’moun Khaled Abu Al-Heija, 15, and Sari Udai Ali Al-Sada, 15...
+
"A fifth child, 14-year-old Ali Abdullah Mohammad Said Khazna, was shot and killed by Israeli forces in the Thenaba neighborhood of Tulkarem around 5 p.m...
+
Read 4 tweets
May 13, 2023
Gideon Levy asks | Do Israelis really want to go on living like this?
"Living by the sword, war after war, one more unnecessary than the one before, all of them
wars of choice, Israel’s choice, with no future
+ no purpose? ...
haaretz.com/opinion/2023-0…
Gideon Levy: "This is the 17th operation in Gaza
in 19 years. A war almost every year. Sometimes,
like in 2004, even two wars...
Gideon Levy: "This was perhaps the most pointless + banal of them all. An aimless war, in which few took interest. While it was going on, Tel Aviv enjoyed an
Aviv Geffen concert..+ later they watched Eurovision. The war broke out b/c a detainee was intentionally allowed to die".
Read 13 tweets
May 13, 2023
Is this what Israeli media has meant, when saying "foreign workers" hit?
"PALEST worker from Gaza killed by rocket
at ISR construction site [Saturday]..
Since the fighting broke out, 6 workers have been wounded or killed in Gaza [envelope] communities"..
haaretz.com/israel-news/20…
Haaretz: "At no point during the current fighting have there been any communities restricted to only 'essential activity' – meaning a total ban on any workplaces continuing to operate..
BUT Nearly all the dead + injured had no access
to a bomb shelter as mandated by Israeli law"
"On Thursday, a foreign-born worker was wounded
by a rocket at a farm in one of the border communities. Last week, two Chinese construction workers were wounded by rocket fire, one of them seriously"...
Read 4 tweets
May 12, 2023
It’s déjà vu all over again, Alon Pinkas writes:
"The fact that we’ve been here before + know
the plot + ending does not change the tragic + unnerving fact that, politically, this is another exercise in futility, a preamble to the next round"...
haaretz.com/israel-news/20…
Alon Pinkas: "There are two discernible trends
in all these recurrent confrontations in Gaza
over the years. The first is that it clearly highlights Israel’s lack of strategy and creative policy.
Israel is always reactive, living from one event
to the next"...
AlonPinkas: "Why? That’s easy. It provides the
ultimate pretext for never having to engage in
a diplomatic process, previously known as
'the peace process'.”
Read 6 tweets
May 11, 2023
Amos Harel: "Israel’s strategy has remained
more or less the same
since the end of Op Guardian of the Walls, which began exactly two years ago...Israel prefers
to clash with Islamic Jihad rather than confront Hamas"...
haaretz.com/israel-news/20…
Amos Harel: "Hamas has time +money to invest in building its military force, and is positioning itself as a real rival of the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank. The Israeli connection with the PA is minimal, certainly under the present government...
Amos Harel: "It seems as though Israel even prefers to show leniency to Hamas, rather than helping the leadership of the PA in Ramallah in any way"...
Read 4 tweets

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