EU to stop paying salaries to do-nothing PA employees in Gaza - but nothing is really changing

I've been reporting since at least 2008 that PA workers were getting salaries in Gaza even though they were doing nothing since Hamas took over. And those salaries were being funded by the West.

In 2013, the European Court of Auditors noticed that the EU was paying PA employees in Gaza for doing nothing.

In 2015, the EU issued a warning to the PA about this.

Finally, after nearly than ten years of this. the EU is going to cut the salaries for Gaza PA employees. But it is not cutting the amount of money it is giving to the PA.

From Middle East Monitor:

An official at the European Commission in occupied Jerusalem announced that the EU has adopted a new financial support policy regarding the Gaza Strip in 2017, in coordination with the Palestinian Authority (PA), but that it would no longer pay the salaries of PA employees in Gaza which is under Hamas control.

Chinese news agency, Xinhua, quoted the Communication and Information Officer at the European Commission in occupied Jerusalem, Shadi Othman, saying that the new policy involves the cessation of European funding being used to pay the salaries of PA employees in Gaza.

Othman explain that, instead, European funding for the Gaza Strip, amounting to 30 million euros, will be used to support poor families and projects related to economic development.

He added that 20 million euros will be transferred for the payment of social allowances to Palestinian families living in poverty in Gaza, which is issued by the PA’s Social Development Ministry.

The rest of the amount, 10 million euros, will be allocated to economic development and infrastructure projects in the Gaza Strip in order to create work opportunities, and will be coordinated in cooperation with the PA, according to Othman.

So the PA gets the exact same amount, Gaza gets the exact same amount, and the opportunities for theft and embezzlement remain exactly the same.

But the EU is not quite as embarrassed as it was before.

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