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Palestinians worry over aid

Chris McGreal

Gaza airport: Tawfiq Musmar takes up his place behind the lost luggage desk at Gaza international airport each morning, checking all is in order at the baggage carousel before wandering off to spend much of the day chatting with the ``land hostesses'' at the check-in counters.

Not a single flight has landed since Israeli army bulldozers tore up the runway in 2001 at the beginning of the Palestinian uprising, and Mr. Musmar wonders how long he will be paid to do nothing. ``There were lots of flights to all the Arab capitals, even Moscow,'' he said. ``Now we get paid but these are not real jobs. Maybe now the jobs are going to disappear like the planes.''

For five years the Gaza airport staff have collected their salaries from the Palestinian Authority, not because they earned them but because so many other people depend on the money to survive. Mr. Musmar (43) earns about £250 a month from which he supports his parents and children.

Real jobs

The wages of every one of the PA's 152,000 workers are paid in part from about $1 billion a year in foreign aid. European and American donors long ago accepted that while they were subsidising many real jobs, such as medical staff and teachers, they were also paying for what amounted to work-for-welfare. Those wages came to be a crucial part of an economy that has contracted by one-third through the intifada.

As first Washington and then Brussels this week froze aid to the PA after Hamas took power, the dependence of the whole economy on western handouts has been thrown into sharp relief. The question for both the E.U. and the U.S. is how to keep the salaries flowing without funding what they regard as a terrorist administration.

The new Hamas government is already grappling to find $120 million for salaries that should have been paid at the beginning of the month after inheriting a deep financial crisis from the previous administration. Foreign donors say they won't let Palestinians starve.

- Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006

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