Reconciling the government apparatus is the first act of any full reconciliation

By: Omar Shaban

In response to the Hamas movement's takeover of the Gaza Strip in June 2007, the Palestinian Authority carried out several measures all aimed, as was said, at making the Hamas government's task of administering the Gaza Strip impossible and pushing it to be exposed and to collapse quickly. Among these measures was the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah asking its employees in the Gaza Strip to boycott work with the dismissed Hamas government, as the Palestinian Authority describes it. This decision caused a real confusion for the Hamas government, which found itself, without preliminaries, responsible for a million and a half Palestinians without a competent and qualified governmental cadre. This forced the Hamas government, in an attempt by it to affirm its capacity to confront that, to fill thousands of vacant posts with its supporters, most of whom did not possess the necessary qualification and experience, and the Hamas government did not have sufficient time to train them. On another side, the employees found themselves between the hammer of the Authority's decision to strike and to cut the salary in the event of not adhering to it, and the anvil of the desire to work and the sense of being. The Palestinian Authority's asking its employees not to work with the Hamas government raised many discussions between supporters and opponents about the legitimacy of the decision and its negative repercussions on Palestinian society. Likewise the issue of returning them to work emerged as one of the thorny issues to which the proverb applies: “a madman throws a stone into the well.. a hundred sane people are needed to get it out”. It was easy to take such a decision with a stroke of the pen without sufficient reflection on its results.

The extent of the decision's legality:

The Palestinian Authority justified its decision preventing its employees in Gaza from working by saying that the Hamas government had become illegitimate and had been dismissed by a presidential decision; therefore it cannot allow its employees to work with the dismissed Hamas government. As though the dismissal of the government also included the dismissal of the bureaucratic apparatus. Many legal opinions cast doubt on the legality of the Authority's decision preventing its employees from working under the administration of the Hamas government; some of them considered it illegal in that it deals with the state's employees as though they were members of a political party and not part of the public accomplishment. These opinions rested on the fact that the employees of the governmental apparatus are among the important assets belonging to the political system and to society regardless of the ruling party; accordingly it must be spared the political disputes. These opinions demonstrated their position by the fact that the money and the aid that were invested in forming and qualifying the Palestinian bureaucratic apparatus — which is one of the marks of sovereignty — were for serving the public good and not for serving a particular political organisation. Meanwhile others described this decision as short-sighted, as it weakened the Palestinian Authority's presence in the governmental apparatus in Gaza and deprived it of footholds of influence, especially in the two apparatuses of health and education — while it granted its opponent, the Hamas movement, a golden opportunity to take possession of the bureaucratic apparatus and employ it in marketing its policy and consolidating its popularity. Following up the decision of abstention from work, the government of the Palestinian Authority punished everyone who breached the strike decision by cutting their salary — which conflicts with the Palestinian Basic Law, which forbids cutting the salaries of the government's employees without the reasons mentioned in the law. And that deepened the social tension and the political polarisation within society.

Severe social problems:

The strike of thousands of employees caused an immense confusion in Palestinian society, for these employees represent an immense human energy in which much was invested in education and training. Likewise this category possesses remarkable experience that Palestinian society was in pressing need of to continue development and to confront the increasing needs because of the blockade and the Israeli escalation from time to time. This decision created an immense vacuum in the governmental apparatus, and especially in the two sectors of health and education, which are the two most important sectors, where more than thirty thousand employees work — which weakened the performance in these two important sectors. The unemployed and the poor, who do not possess a fixed source of income, looked with much envy and rancour at these strikers, who receive fixed and high wages without expending any effort — especially those who receive high salaries reaching two thousand dollars monthly, whereas they themselves work in lowly posts and in exhausting works in return for very meagre wages not exceeding 500 dollars monthly. Likewise Palestinian society was in pressing need of the services of this category of employees for their possessing important experience that cannot be dispensed with, in general and in times of wars and blockade in particular. It was raised from time to time that the Palestinian Authority's continuing to pay the salaries of its striking employees was what created the financial crisis, whereas the salaries of these strikers from work are paid by the donor states, which means their approval of the strike, as that accords with their position boycotting the Hamas government. No less importantly, this decision caused a distortion of the natural relations and the sharing of roles between man and woman in society.

The solution is easier than is thought:

This issue will be a real dilemma for the national reconciliation in the event of its not being untangled on one hand, and will be an asset in the event of its being treated, as it will work on lightening the social tension and on enabling any coming government to implement the reconstruction of the Gaza Strip. The process of returning them to the governmental apparatus may seem difficult, but dismantling the problem provides an encouraging climate for applying it: the steady population growth in the Gaza Strip and the rebuilding of what the blockade and the war destroyed provide immense opportunities for reabsorbing them. Indeed there is a pressing need for many of their specialisations. Many of them could not bear the state of stillness and returned to work with the Hamas government gradually, while another section left the Gaza Strip to reside abroad, and a part of them reached the legal retirement age and some of them died. Returning these to governmental work requires qualification and development programmes to fill the scientific and training gap caused by the distance from work for six years. But it is a step from which there is no escape, to strengthen the reconciliation and enable the Palestinian political system to restore its unity and its role in achieving development.

It is worth mentioning here that during the Israeli escalation against the Gaza Strip in November 2012 the Palestinian Authority allowed its striking employees to return to their places of work, especially those who work in the civil-defence and health apparatuses, to help in confronting the fires and the injuries. But the return of thousands of them still awaits a political and administrative decision that would make their return to work the first item in the celebration of the national reconciliation, in a way that provides the conditions of easy integration, guarantees its continuation, and enables the activation of the development process.

The source: http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/ar/contents/articles/opinion/2013/02/palestine-reconciliation-today.html