PA urges Arab countries to continue funding

The Palestinian Authority cabinet on Tuesday called on donor countries to continue to provide support for the government and Palestinian people. A statement issued after the weekly meeting urged "brotherly Arabs to speed up their support in order for the National Authority to meet its commitments." It also "stressed that this support is necessary to enable the Authority to meet the needs of the Palestinian people, in order to provide the requirements for strengthening people's steadfastness in light of settlement expansion that targets occupied Jerusalem and its surroundings. "The Cabinet affirmed that the Authority, who worked on decreasing expenditure and increasing its revenue in its current budget as much as possible, would continue to exert every effort to treat this crisis and delimit its effects including the payment of public services salaries by mid-day today." The European Union, meanwhile, made a contribution of 22.5 million euros to the payment of March salaries and pensions of around 84,000 Palestinian civil servants and pensioners, officials said Tuesday. This contribution is being funded by the European Commission. "With this new monthly contribution, the EU demonstrates once again its strong commitment to support the Palestinian Authority's efforts to maintain regular payments to its employees and pensioners, as well as to ensure the delivery of basic public services," said EU official John Gatt-Rutter. In a statement, he added that "the EU calls on all donors to provide their financial support to the PA in a timely and reliable manner in this very challenging times for the Palestinian Authority". Earlier Tuesday, the PA civil servants union said the government was able to pay March salaries. The PA failed to pay civil servants salaries in full and on time on several occasions last year. The PA employs about 170,000 people in the West Bank and Gaza, where its employees continue to receive salaries even though the Hamas government has replaced them with its own civil servants.