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Qatar allocates $480 mn in aid to Palestinians
DOHA, May 7, 2019 (BSS/AFP) – Qatar said Tuesday it has allocated $480
million in aid to the cash-strapped Palestinian Authority to support
education and health services and provide urgent humanitarian relief.
The authority led by president Mahmud Abbas has been hit by the cutting of
two of its leading sources of revenues.
Washington has ended all bilateral US aid in response to the Palestinians’
severing of contacts after it recognised the disputed city of Jerusalem as
Israel’s capital in 2017.
A row with Israel has meanwhile led to a halt to transfers of customs
duties it levies on goods destined for Palestinian markets.
“The state of Qatar has allocated $300 million in the form of grants and
loans to support the health and education sectors’ budgets with the
Palestinian Authority,” the official Qatar News Agency reported.
It said that Doha has also allocated another $180 million in “urgent relief
and humanitarian aid and in support of UN programmes in Palestine.”
Aid will also go to the power sector to ensure supplies are not
interrupted, the statement said.
In February, Israel decided to deduct around $10 million a month from
customs receipts it transfers to the Palestinians, corresponding to the
amount it said they paid families of prisoners or directly to inmates serving
time in Israeli jails.
The Palestinians responded by saying they would refuse any funds where
unilateral deductions had been made.
Israel sees the payments to those who have carried out attacks against
Israelis as encouraging further violence.
The Palestinian Authority describes the payments as a form of welfare,
while the Palestinian public regards prisoners jailed by Israel as national
heroes.
Gas-rich Qatar is a major aid donor to the Palestinians, both to Abbas’s
West Bank-based Palestinian Authority and to the rival Gaza administration of
Islamist group Hamas.
BSS/AFP/MSY/1235 hrs