RAMALLAH, West Bank — The prime minister of the Palestinian national reconciliation government, Rami Hamdallah, declared Oct. 3 that an agreement had been reached with Qatar, in coordination with the United Nations, to secure the transfer of a financial payment before the end of the month to a number of Gaza civil servants under the previous Hamas government. However, Ministry of Finance figures show that the government can't fulfill its financial obligations to these workers on a regular basis, because of its dependency on receiving regular financial aid from donor countries.

The financial arrangement with Qatar of $20 million came after the Fatah-Hamas agreement was signed on Sept. 25 in Cairo. The most prominent of these issues is paying the Gaza government workers’ salaries. In accordance to the Fatah-Hamas agreement, the reconciliation government, which was sworn in on June 2, would administer the affairs of the Gaza Strip.

Mahmoud al-Zahar, a leading Hamas figure and a member of the delegation who participated in the Cairo negotiations, told Al-Monitor in a phone interview, “The agreement stipulates that those who were employed before and after June 14, 2007, are public officials, without regard to the nature of their jobs or ranks.”

Zahar said, “There are no civil and noncivil servants. A police officer is a civil servant. All these [people] are employees whom the Palestinian Authority [PA] did not recognize before. It considered them ‘illegitimate’ and ‘appointed by an illegitimate government.’ But now, after the agreement, they have been recognized. And the responsibility rests with the government. … An international party said that it would contribute to paying the Gaza workers’ salaries and no one opposes that. The reconciliation government is responsible for all the details.”