Paris: The European Union's freeze on direct aid to the Hamas-led Palestinian government is "unjustified," Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said in a newspaper interview published yesterday.
Abbas said he would explain his position during visits to Norway, Turkey and France next week, "so that the Palestinians are not penalised by the economic blockade." "I believe that the stop in European aid is unjustified," he told Le Monde.
"If European countries do not want contacts with the Palestinian government, there are other means to maintain aid destined for the Palestinian people," including channelling funding through his office, "which would receive and redistribute it," said Abbas, who is due in Paris next Thursday and Friday.
Although the EU said it would continue to fund health care, education and other humanitarian projects, the indefinite freeze of direct budgetary aid to the Hamas-led Palestinian government will dry up hundreds of millions of euros in annual EU money that had been going directly into the Palestinian National Authority's budget for a wide range of infrastructure projects and the payroll for 140,000 government employees.
The United States, Canada and non-EU member Norway have also cut off payments.
Abbas said government employees' salaries should be paid, in full or in part, as soon as possible.
"We are going to make proposals along this line to the Americans and Europeans in the hope that they will be accepted," he said.
Abbas also said that Hamas must fall into line with his moderate positions or risk isolation. He said he had hoped that the movement would condemn this week's suicide bombing in Tel Aviv claimed by Islamic Jihad, but "unfortunately, they did not." "I hope that they will change their position in future. I try night and day to convince them to adopt my policies, which are moderate. If they do not, they will end up totally isolated, and thus incapable of accomplishing their mission," Abbas said.
Meanwhile, the European Union denied that its suspension of Palestinian aid is chiefly to blame for the Hamas-led government's financial crisis, pointing the finger clearly at Israel.
The European Commission, the EU's executive arm, said it was not a "major source" of funding for the Palestinian National Authority, underlining that only 10 per cent of the government's wage bill usually comes from EU money.
"While we are the major donor ... we are not the major source of finance for the PNA," said Emma Udwin, spokeswoman for EU External Relations Commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner.
"The PNA lives much more substantially from the tax transfers made by Israel of Palestinian money," she said.
Since Hamas' January election win, Israel has suspended transfers of about $50 million (Dh183.6 million) every month as reimbursement for customs duties levied on goods destined for Palestinian markets that transit through Israeli ports.
