Ramallah, West Bank – A new account set up to bypass an international boycott of Hamas has begun disbursing vital foreign aid to the Palestinians, with tens of millions of dollars expected to be used to partially pay civil-servant salaries this week, the finance minister said Sunday.
The move is key to restoring relations between the Palestinians and donor countries, but there is no end in sight to the boycott, which was imposed when Hamas came to power more than a year ago, Salam Fayyad said in an interview.
While Arab countries and Norway have already paid a total of $184 million into the new fund, the two biggest donors to the Palestinians – the U.S. and European Union – have not committed to it, he said.
Fayyad, a U.S.-educated former International Monetary Fund executive and finance minister under the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, returned to the Treasury in March after Hamas brought the moderate Fatah movement into the government.
One of the alliance’s main goals was to get the embargo lifted.
But while most Western countries now deal with the non- Hamas members of the coalition, they’ve largely stuck to the boycott because the Islamic militants refuse to recognize Israel or renounce violence.
In mid-May, Fayyad established a new channel for foreign aid – an account for the Palestine Liberation Organization, the Palestinians’ political umbrella organization of which Hamas is not a member.
