Palestina,
finanza
Nyt 06-01-28
Hamas rischia una crisi finanziaria; rischio di taglio
degli aiuti
STEVEN ERLANGER
L’Autorità palestinese è virtualmente in bancarotta, ha
accumulato un deficit di $69 mn nel solo mese di gennaio.
135 000 i dipendenti pubblici, compresi 58 000
agenti delle forze di sicurezza che attendono il pagamento degli stipendi. I
dipendenti pubblici rappresentano 1/3 delle famiglie palestinesi.
Un alto funzionario di Hamas, Mahmoud Zahar, sostiene che la
maggior parte degli aiuti di UE e USA finivano in mani corrotte, in particolare
ai capi della sicurezza.
Lo scorso anno l’Autorità palestinese, infrangendo le
promesse fatte a BM e paesi donatori, ha aumentato in modo significativo i
salari dei dipendenti pubblici. Secondo la BM tutte le entrate palestinesi
($1MD) sono ora assorbite dai salari del PI, portando il deficit statale per il
2006 a $600-700mn., di cui solo $320mn. colmabili con i contributi UE, Usa e
paesi arabi.
Hamas riceve aiuti dall’Iran, che probabilmente li aumenterà per l’AP.
Hamas, ramo palestinese della Fratellanza musulmana sannita, potrebbe non
volere una eccessiva dipendenza dall’Iran sciita.
Nyt 06-01-28
Hamas Is
Facing a Money Crisis; Aid May Be Cut
By STEVEN
ERLANGER
Correction Appended
JERUSALEM, Jan. 27
— Hamas leaders, savoring their landslide victory in Palestinian elections,
faced an array of threats on Friday: a huge government deficit, a likely cutoff
of most aid, international ostracism and the rage of defeated and armed Fatah
militants.
Of the many questions that the Hamas
victory presents, the need to pay basic bills and salaries to Palestinians
is perhaps the most pressing. The Palestinian Authority is functionally
bankrupt, with a deficit of $69 million for January alone.
That will be an urgent question when the
United States, the European Union, Russia and the United Nations, known as
the quartet, meet in London on Monday to discuss the Palestinian vote,
especially if, as some American officials fear, Hamas turns to Iran to make up
some of the difference.
"They don’t have enough to get
through the end of the month," a knowledgeable Western diplomat said.
"The United States
and the European Union both consider Hamas a terrorist organization, and we
don’t provide money to terrorist organizations or members of terrorist organizations."
In Washington,
President Bush said "aid packages won’t go forward" for the
Palestinian Authority if Hamas did not renounce violence or its commitment to
destroy Israel.
"That’s their decision to
make," he said on CBS News. "But we won’t be providing help to a
government that wants to destroy our ally and friend."
Meanwhile, in the southern Gaza town of Khan
Yunis, Hamas supporters clashed with Fatah gunmen and
the Palestinian security forces in two separate incidents, leaving six people
wounded, according to witnesses and medical workers. [Page A9.]
In Davos,
Switzerland, James D.
Wolfensohn, the quartet’s envoy to the Middle East,
spoke of the Palestinians’ financial problems, saying there was not enough
money to pay the salaries of 135,000 Palestinian civil servants, including some
58,000 members of the security forces, which he said could lead to further
chaos.
Because Hamas has not yet formed a
government, the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, has asked American
help to persuade the Persian Gulf countries to provide more aid now, and to ensure
that Israel delivers the $40
million to $50 million owed to the Palestinian Authority from tax and customs
receipts, which Israel
collects on behalf of the Palestinians.
Israel has made it clear that it will not deal with a Palestinian
Authority run by Hamas and has said some of those
who have won election are wanted for suspected involvement in anti-Israel
violence. Most of them are in semi-seclusion, and fear arrest if they try to
travel to Ramallah, the site of the Palestinian parliament in the West Bank.
Also in Davos, Joseph Bachar, director
general of Israel’s Finance
Ministry, raised the question of whether Israel
would continue to transfer the tax and customs receipts to an authority run by
Hamas, which does not recognize the existence of Israel.
The departing Palestinian economy
minister, Mazen Sinokrot, said the 135,000 civil servants were the main
breadwinners for 30 percent of Palestinian families. "If these salaries
do not come in, this is a message for violence," he said.
Israeli officials suggested that Ehud
Olmert, Israel’s acting
prime minister, would agree to release this month’s money anyway, since a Hamas
government has not been formed, but questioned whether Israel would agree to give any
money to Hamas in the future. "We don’t want to punish the Palestinian
people," an official said. "But we don’t have any illusions about
Hamas."
Mahmoud Zahar, a top Hamas official,
said in an interview in Gaza
that he was not worried about the lack of money from the West.
"All the money from Europe and American went into the pockets of corrupt
men," Mr. Zahar said, citing Palestinian security
chiefs as a leading example. "The leaders of these services became
multimillionaires. We are going to reform these services. This is our mission."
The current financial crunch has little
to do with Hamas. The Palestinian Authority last summer broke its promises
to the World Bank and the donor countries and significantly raised salaries to
public employees, a number swollen by the effort to absorb armed young men into
the security forces. All its $1 billion in revenues is now taken up by
salaries, according to the World Bank, leaving an expected budget deficit for
2006 of $600 million to $700 million; only about $320 million of that would
have been covered by foreign contributions from the United
States, Europe and Arab
countries.
The plan assumed a Fatah victory in the
elections and the formation of a new, more technocratic government. Donor
countries and the World Bank were working on a restructuring program for the
Palestinian Authority that would cover its large financial debt for the next
few years in return for serious reforms and job-creation programs.
But the victory by Hamas has exploded
all those assumptions.
Direct payments from the United States are banned by American law, and
many European nations have said they will not continue to aid the Palestinian
Authority until Hamas agrees to recognize Israel and disavow violence, which
Hamas has said it will never do.
American and European officials are also
banned from talking to Hamas officials, elected or otherwise. Once a group is
on the American terrorist list, as Hamas is, it is difficult to get off; it
takes more than pledges or statements, a Western diplomat said.
The development minister for the new
German government, Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul, said Friday that German aid to the Palestinians depended on Hamas’s renouncing violence
and recognizing Israel.
Chancellor Angela Merkel is scheduled
to make a first official visit to the region next week, and her spokesman, Ulrich Wilhelm, said Friday: "The
recognition of Israel’s
right to security and to exist remains an irrevocable cornerstone of German
foreign policy." Ms. Merkel will meet Mr. Abbas but no Hamas official.
Hamas candidates and officials have
played down the problem, saying they will appeal to the Arab and Muslim world,
which already gives large amounts of aid to Hamas and its charitable and
educational organizations — some of which, Israel says, moves seamlessly to
finance its military operations.
Hamas already gets aid from Iran, Israeli and American officials say, and it is possible that Iran
may be willing to provide larger sums to the Palestinian Authority. But
Israeli and Western diplomats say Hamas, as a Palestinian branch of the
Sunni Muslim Brotherhood, could also be wary of becoming overly dependent on
Shiite Iran.
Former President Jimmy Carter, who led a
team of election observers for the Palestinian voting, said in an interview on
Friday that the United States
and Europe should redirect their relief aid to
United Nations organizations and nongovernmental organizations to skirt legal
restrictions.
"The donor community can deal with
it successfully," Mr. Carter said. "I would hope the world community
can collectively tide the Palestinians over." He urged support for what
he said Mr. Wolfensohn was describing to him as a $500 million appeal.
"It may well be that Hamas can
change," Mr. Carter said, remembering his presidency, when the Palestine
Liberation Organization under Yasir Arafat finally agreed to recognize the existence
of Israel
and to forswear terrorism. "It’s a mistake to abandon optimism
completely."
He urged Israel and the world: "Don’t
drive the Palestinians away from rationality. Don’t force them into assuming
arms as the only way to achieve their legitimate goals. Give them some
encouragement and the benefit of the doubt."
But it will be politically difficult to
do that. Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr., Democrat of Delaware, said he had spoken
to the Europeans and Mr. Wolfensohn about the fiscal crunch. "But the fact
of the matter is, you cannot pour millions and hundreds of millions of dollars
into a group that, in fact, calls for the destruction of an ally, or for any
country, for that matter," Mr. Biden said.
The Western diplomat said: "We’re
discussing a lot of complicated questions. But even before the election, the
Palestinian Authority’s fiscal house was in disarray, with a huge deficit every
month."
It will be worse still, he said, if the
Israelis stop cash transfers and there is a halt in direct aid from the West
and the World Bank.
Greg Myre contributed reporting from Gaza for this article, and Steven R. Weisman from Washington.
Correction: Jan. 30, 2006
An article on Saturday about problems
Hamas was facing even as it savored its victory in the Palestinian elections
misstated the timing of the agreement by Yasir Arafat, the former Palestinian
leader, to recognize the existence of Israel and to forswear terrorism.
That development came in 1988, at the end of the Reagan administration,
not during the Carter administration.
The New York Times