Minister Shawqi Al-Issa and the claim that Gaza receives 55% of the Authority's budget

By: Omar Shaban

In his talk with the Maan satellite channel two days ago, Minister Shawqi al-Issa, minister of social affairs in the national consensus government and head of the central governmental emergency room, returned to repeating the saying whose gist is that 55% of the Palestinian Authority's budget is allocated to Gaza — adding that the Palestinian Authority will postpone the payment of the July salary of the West Bank's employees in order to support our people in the Gaza Strip..

Dear Minister, I was happy to speak with you two days ago and I value your efforts to serve your people in the Gaza Strip, but I hope your breast widens for my following observations:

You repeat an old saying that has been repeated tens of times since the accursed division in June 2007, and it is a saying absolutely incorrect. It has never been backed by any evidence despite the many demands for that. I think you were hasty in repeating this saying, especially in these tragic circumstances the Gaza Strip lives, which require much solidarity and altruism. This proportion — and it is absolutely incorrect — is supposed to change with time, as is the habit of financial and economic indicators, taking into consideration the increase of the population in Gaza and the West Bank and the circumstances of the blockade on Gaza, which witnessed a noticeable lightening just after the Freedom Flotilla incident at the end of May 2010, and the decline of the tunnels trade with Egypt, which multiplied the Gaza Strip's purchases from Israel and raised the Gaza Strip's contribution to the proceeds of the clearance taxes Israel transfers monthly to the Palestinian Authority.

• Your statement that the payment of the salaries of the northern governorates' employees for the month of July will be postponed because of the transfer of emergency allocations to the Gaza Strip may give a signal of non-solidarity and deepen the impression — which some have tried to create since the years of the division — whose gist is that the Gaza Strip represents a burden on the Palestinian national project politically and financially. It is not acceptable, at this time in particular, to load onto the Gaza Strip the weight of the Authority's chronic financial crisis and the results of the Finance Ministry's failure in managing public money and the cash flows — skills any financial accountant must master. The financial crisis is not new, so why was it not confronted radically, and why did the Palestinian Authority continue pumping thousands of new jobs! And why did it not actually practise the austerity policy it announced tens of times? We have the right to ask what are the measures the Mr Minister of Finance took to treat the Authority's deficit accumulated over years! More important than that: the Authority's inability to pay its employees' salaries — which is the minimum of its duties — draws great doubts around the justifications of its existence and its capacity to lead the national project.

• This saying carries much vagueness, to a degree that loses its credibility completely, for the Finance Ministry has never published it despite our demanding it tens of times. And according to the legal principle, “the proof is on the one who claims”! I expected of you — you having assumed your post only a few weeks ago — to ask of the Finance Ministry what proves this claim, with clarification of the following: what are the items of expenses allocated in detail to the Gaza Strip! And what are the items of revenues, and their size, that the Authority realises from the Gaza Strip's purchases, especially in the field of petroleum, cars, and other tens of goods! Is this proportion of the total of the general budget, which includes the salaries and the development projects and those allocated to the Palestinian embassies, the factions' secretaries, the members of the Revolutionary Council, and other of the other items! The statement of the Palestinian Authority's budget published on the Finance Ministry's page does not include any of this detail, and it has never been published in the past.
• The Gaza Strip was and remains a source of support for the Palestinian budget, for many of the Arab and international donations that were allocated to the Gaza Strip used to be entered into the Finance Ministry's account; all the international-support projects allocated to Gaza are managed by the Gaza projects management unit that was formed in the Finance Ministry.

One of the examples is what happened at the Sharm el-Sheikh conference, held on the second of March 2009 just after the first war on the Gaza Strip, where the former prime minister Dr Salam Fayyad presented his plan “Reconstruction of the Gaza Strip”, in which only 40% was allocated to the Gaza Strip and the rest to budget support.

Another example is the support allocations decided by many Arab and Western states during the days of the Israeli aggression on the Gaza Strip — at their head the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, which donated half a billion riyals according to what Mr President Mahmoud Abbas said — in addition to the multiple assistances in the field of health and humanitarian services, which will be pumped entirely into the Authority's accounts.

We realise that this assistance will help the Palestinian Authority in backing its sons in the Gaza Strip and in surpassing its financial crisis as well.
• In your capacity as head of the central emergency committee I call on you to set a detailed list comprising all the donations and the cash and in-kind assistance that was allocated to the Gaza Strip, and likewise the items of disbursement, the mechanism of disbursement, and the bodies that were authorised with that — for the sake of strengthening transparency and trust and recovering the unity of feeling before the political unity between our people in the governorates of the north and the south and with the Palestinian Authority and its people. With my affirmation that the Palestinian people in the southern governorates and the northern governorates is unified and of one heart, despite the poisoned attempts of those whose validity has expired to instil the spirit of rancour and racism between them.