With Gaza in Financial Crisis, Fears That ‘an Explosion’s Coming’
While thousands of Palestinian Authority workers in Gaza like Mr. Abu Shaaban were forced into early retirement,
and those who remained saw their pay cut 40 percent, some 40,000 Hamas workers — many of them police officers — have not been paid in months, officials say.
Hamas, eager to rid itself of the burdens of governing — though unwilling to disarm its military wing — showed flexibility at the talks, quickly ceding control over border crossings like the one with Israel at Kerem Shalom,
and the tax collections there that had provided it with some $20 million a month.
But that meant keeping an enormous degree of control over the flow of people, cargo, energy
and international aid across the border — and as it clamps down, the resulting social harm in Gaza can blow back against Israel.
And Israel, in an underground-barrier project with a nearly $1 billion price tag, is steadily
sealing its border to the attack tunnels into Israel that Gaza militants spent years digging.
The one it has resorted to three times — going to war with Israel, in hopes of generating international sympathy
and relief in the aftermath — suddenly seems least attractive.
At the heart of the crisis — and its most immediate cause — is a crushing financial squeeze, the result of a tense standoff between Hamas, the militant Islamist group
that rules Gaza, and Fatah, the secular party entrenched on the West Bank.
Last year, the Palestinian Authority’s president, Mahmoud Abbas, ratcheted up the pressure on Hamas, stopping its payments for fuel for Gaza’s power station
and to Israel for electrical transmission into the Gaza Strip.
