Israel will transfer 72 million shekels (23 million dollars) to the Gaza Strip on Tuesday to pay the salaries of Palestinian civil servants, a senior Israeli defence ministry official said. "These funds will be transferred by the Palestinian Authority of Mahmud Abbas. They are for paying the salaries of Abbas's people," Deputy Defence Minister Matan Vilnai told public radio.
Vilnai said the transfer would be carried out according to "arrangements concluded with Mahmud Abbas" and that the funds would not fall into the hands of the Islamist Hamas movement which seized power in Gaza in June 2007. He did not specify how the transfer would be carried out.
Yaacov Edri, the minister of immigrant absorption, denounced the transfer, saying the funds would be used by Hamas for "terrorist operations." Israel transfers around 75 million dollars a month to the Palestinian Authority in taxes and customs duties it collects on behalf of the Palestinians. The funds are used to pay the more than 160,000 civil servants in the occupied West Bank and Gaza.