Qatar will soon resume funding for civil servants and poor families in the besieged Gaza Strip under a new mechanism involving the Palestinian Authority and the United Nations, the Gulf state’s aid envoy has said.
Envoy Mohammed al-Emadi said on Monday, after meeting leaders from Hamas, the Palestinian group that governs Gaza, that Qatari stipends for civil servants and poor families, suspended since May, would resume in the coming days.
Doha has underwritten Gaza rebuilding and infrastructure projects since the 2014 Israeli offensive on the coastal enclave, but another round of fighting in May prompted Israeli and the US demands to revise the payouts.
“All the details” regarding the distribution mechanism “have been reviewed and the process will begin shortly,” al-Emadi said.
A source within Hamas said a sticking point was its insistence that civil servants employed by the movement be allowed to benefit from Qatari aid.
Civil servants in Gaza’s Hamas-run government can be considered approved recipients, “following an agreement by the different parties”, Emadi said.
Gas-rich Qatar used to spend $30m a month to help operate the enclave’s lone power plant and to support families and public servants.
Hamas, blacklisted as a terrorist group in the West, has endorsed a new payment mechanism involving the rival, Western-backed Palestinian Authority (PA) of President Mahmoud Abbas as well as the United Nations, al-Emadi said in a statement.
He did not elaborate.
Israeli officials had previously said that the PA- and UN-led mechanism could involve disbursing the Qatari aid as vouchers rather than cash, as a safeguard against Hamas diverting the money to military ends.
