In yesterday's LA Times it was reported that the Palestinian Authority is being faced with increasing financial difficulties. The PA has until July 26 to pay the salaries of its 150,000 government workers after already defaulting on half of its obligation to the workers salaries last month.
The head of the public employees union, Bassam Zakarneh, has regularly accused Fayyad of not being totally honest about the financial situation. He charges that Fayyad has been able to pay for projects and trips abroad for his ministers, but that when it comes to salaries, Fayyad says he does not have the money.
Zakarneh even went as far as to say that if Fayyad does not have the money and is unable to pay salaries, how he can claim that the Palestine Authority will be ready for statehood in September when it plans to ask the United Nations General Assembly to such recognition.
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All the government can do now is appeal for help from the donors, mainly the Arab countries whose aid has dropped from $500 million in 2009 to half that amount in 2010 and less than a fifth so far this year.
Some analysts, however, believe that the donors are using the aid to pressure the Palestinian Authority to drop plans to ask for U.N. recognition, a move strongly opposed by the U.S., Israel and their European allies, and possibly to also shelve plans to reconcile with Hamas, which the West considers as a terrorist organization.
With the questions being asked of Fayyad's administration of salaries it is clear his past ability to pay the bills is being challenged due to either, as Zakerneh alleges, inappropriate authorization of trips abroad or an ever increasing lack of funds (or both?). Dependency on aid, much like dependency on countries buying your debt, comes with potentially countervailing values and priorities. And it will take a skilled politician to weave through the forces at hand so that salaries are paid, infrastructure is built, peace talks resume, and two-states can emerge for two-peoples.